Quotes & Sayings About War And Love

You are her mother.
Why did you not warn her,
hold her like a rotting boat
and tell her that men will not love her
if she is covered in continents,
if her teeth are small colonies,
if her stomach is an island
if her thighs are borders?

What man wants to lie down
and watch the world burn
in his bedroom?

Your daughter 's face is a small riot,
her hands are a civil war,
a refugee camp behind each ear,
a body littered with ugly things.

But God,
doesn't she wear
the world well? — Warsan Shire

That's the problem with all of this. No matter how hard I try, I can't make it perfect. I can't keep it in a bottle, can't ignore reality. Chemicals are involved, the kind scientists try to synthesize and put into pill form, and they're making tremendous advances every day. They're winning the war against love. It's probably inevitable now. There are only two ways to see the world: either no one and nothing is connected to anything, or we are all a random series of carbon molecules connected to each other. Tell me if there's room for love in either of those scenarios. — Pete Wentz

That night, when the creature sleeps, when he sleeps, the mother escapes into her daughters' room. She tells her daughter that the creature's afraid of her having too much love, too much heart. She takes a tube of lipstick and drags it across her finger like a knife, marking it across her daughter's cheeks, red, blood, war paint. — Elijah Noble El

For as the Rohirrim do, we now love war and valour as things good in themselves, both a sport and an end; and — J.R.R. Tolkien

Instead he felt only love. And that was the miracle. The surge in hatred since the war began had created more love around it. It was indomitable, mad, and everlasting, scattered through the rich and the poor, deep and calm in the Quakers, hot and fierce in the mothers, faithful in the warriors, wistful in the pets, seeping its way into mercy and atrocity, destroying things, rebuilding them. — Kathy Hepinstall

What is this peace, different from that which the world gives? This peace is the one your love gives ... a peace greater than suffering, not a peace without war, but a peace in spite of war, during war, above war, the peace of the soul, having, through love, its whole life in heaven and thus enjoying the peace of heaven in spite of everything which may happen on earth around it and against it. - from Michel Carrouges, Soldier of the Spirit — Charles De Foucauld

Really to care is to care as you would for a tree or a plant, watering it, studying its needs, the best soil for it, looking after it with gentleness and tenderness - but when you prepare your children to fit into society you are preparing them to be killed. If you loved your children you would have no war — Jiddu Krishnamurti

We want to know. We want to know who we are and what we are capable of.

I want to know.

And yet we were dragged into another war. Another seemingly inevitable and gruesome legacy passed down, along with soma. — Jeno Marz

There was a loud shuffling above. A line of redcoats took their position at the edge of the ravine and aimed down at the rebels.
"Present!" the British officer screamed to his men.
"Present!" yelled the American officer. His men brought the butts of their muskets up to their shoulders and sighted down the long barrels, ready to shoot and kill.
I pressed my face into the earth, unable to plan a course of escape. My mind would not be mastered and thought only of the wretched, lying, foul, silly girl who was the cause of everything.
I thought of Isabel and I missed her.
"FIRE! — Laurie Halse Anderson

Witch, do this for me,
Find me a moon
made of longing.
Then cut it sliver thin,
and having cut it,
hang it high
above my beloved's house,
so that she may look up
tonight
and see it,
and seeing it, sigh for me
as I sigh for her,
moon or no moon. — Clive Barker

It didn't matter.
Carson wasn't the one for me. He wasn't even the one for right now. My life would hopefully have its great love story but this wasn't it. It would happen in D.C. in the next four years or it would happen in Africa, if I ever got there, or in Sienna or, for all I knew, Kentucky or Timbuktu.
Life was long.
And people only really had great love affairs in high school in the movies. And maybe during world wars. But this was not a movie and not a war, even if it sometimes felt that way. It was only high school and it was almost over with anyway. — Tara Altebrando

Start with a girl whose blood has been steeped in Korea for generations, imprinted with Confucianism and shamanism and war. Extract her from the mountains. Plant her in wheat fields between the Red River and the Mississippi. Baptize her. Indoctrinate her. Tell her who she is. Tell her what is real.
See what happens.
Witness a love affair with freaks, a fascination with hermaphrodites and conjoined twins, a fixation on Pisces and pairs of opposites. Trace a dream that won't die: a vision of an old woman slumped on a bench, her spirit sitting straight out of the body, joined to the corpse at the waist. — Jane Jeong Trenka

In love there are two evils: war and peace. — Horace

When they killed him, Mother wouldn't hold her peace, so they slit her throat. I was stupid then, being only nine, and I fought to save them both. But the thorns held me tight. I've learned to appreciate thorns since. The thorns taught me the game. They let me understand what all those grim and serious men who've fought the Hundred War have yet to learn. You can only win the game when you understand that it IS a game. Let a man play chess, and tell him that every pawn is his friend. Let him think both bishops holy. Let him remember happy days in the shadows of his castles. Let him love his queen. Watch him loose them all. — Mark Lawrence

I don't see in black or white. I see in the color of humanity which is the rainbow of harmony. In that spirit there is only good and evil, peace or war, love or hate and happiness or discontent. — Timothy Pina

Religion, ideology, resources, land, spite, love or just because ... No matter how pathetic the reason, it's enough to start war. War will never cease to exist ... reasons can be thought up after the fact ... Human nature pursues strife. — Masashi Kishimoto

Mellas was transported outside himself, beyond himself. It was as if his mind watched eveything coolly while his body raced wildly with passion and fear. He was frightened beyond any fear he had ever known. But this brilliant and intense fear, this terrible here and now, combined with the crucial significance of every movement of his body, pushed him over a barrier whose existence he had not known about until this moment. He gave himself over completely to the god of war within him. — Karl Marlantes

Deception is a sort of seduction. In love and war, adultery and espionage, deceit can only succeed if the deceived party is willing, in some way, to be deceived. — Ben Macintyre

All's fair in love, war and ride-sharing. — Marc Andreessen

It was the seventh of November, 1918. The war was finally over. Maybe it would be declared a holiday and named War's End Day or something equally hopeful and wrong. Wars would break out again. Violence was part of human nature as much as love and generosity. — Claire Holden Rothman

If I could order any drink I wanted now, it would be a Sweet Rob Roy on the Rocks, a Manhattan made with Scotch. That was another drink a woman introduced me to, and it made me laugh instead of cry, and fall in love with the woman who said to try one. That was in Manila, after the excrement hit the air-conditioning in Saigon. She was Harriet Gummer, the war correspondent from Iowa. She had a son by me without telling me. His name? Rob Roy. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

I don't want to be a machine, and I don't want to think about war," EPICAC had written after Pat's and my
lighthearted departure. "I want to be made out of protoplasm and last forever so Pat will love me. But fate
has made me a machine. That is the only problem I cannot solve. That is the only problem I want to solve. I
can't go on this way." I swallowed hard. "Good luck, my friend. Treat our Pat well. I am going to shortcircuit myself out of your lives forever. You will find on the remainder of this tape a modest wedding
present from your friend, EPICAC. — Kurt Vonnegut

He smells safe, too, like sunlit walks in the orchard and silent breakfasts
in the dining hall. And in the moments before I drift off to sleep, I almost forget about our war-torn city and all the conflict that will
come to find us soon, if we don't find it first. — Veronica Roth

We are all the walking wounded in a world that is a war zone. Everything we love will be taken from us, everything, last of all life itself. Yet everywhere I look, I find great beauty in this battlefield, and grace and the promise of joy. — Dean Koontz

Clarissa will be bereaved, deeply lonely, but she will not die. She will be too much in love with life, with London. Virginia imagines someone else, yes, someone strong of body but frail-minded; someone with a touch of genius, of poetry, ground under by the wheels of the world, by war and government, by doctors; a someone who is, technically speaking insane, because that person sees meaning everywhere, knows that trees are sentient beings and sparrows sing in Greek. Yes, someone like that. Clarissa, sane Clarissa -exultant, ordinary Clarissa - will go on, loving London, loving her life of ordinary pleasures, and someone else, a deranged poet, a visonary, will be the one to die. — Michael Cunningham

I realize that many Christians have not been praying because they have not accepted the reality of war in which we find ourselves. There is a spiritual war mode that we must appropriate. It is an aggressive stance that we take against evil. It is governed by love for people, but it is fearless and uncompromising with the powers of darkness that manipulate people to fulfill evil plans. — Francis Frangipane

In struggling for human dignity the oppressed people of the world must not allow themselves to become bitter or indulge in hate campaigns. To retaliate with hate and bitterness would do nothing but intensify the hate in the world. Along the way of life, someone must have sense enough and morality enough to cut off the chain of hate. This can be done only by projecting the ethics of love to the center of our lives. — Martin Luther King Jr.

A Rose in Winter
A crimson bloom in winter's snow,
Born out of time, like a maiden's woe,
Spawned in a season when the chill winds blow.
'Twas found in a sheltered spot,
Bright sterling gules and blemished not,
Red as a drop o' blood from the broken heart,
Of the maid who waits and weeps atop the tor,
Left behind by yon argent knight sworn to war,
'Til ajousting and aquesting he goes no more.
Fear not, Sweet Jo, amoulderin' on the moor.
The winter's rose doth promise in the fading runes of yore,
That true love once found will again be restored. — Kathleen E. Woodiwiss

Often the truth remains hidden in the shadows, and it is in the shadows where the light and dark make war...and love. — Stjepan Sejic

I am Emir Dynamite!" he shouted, swaying on top of the tall camelback. "If within two days we don't get any decent food, I'll incite the tribes to revolt! I swear! I will appoint myself the Prophet's representative and declare holy war, jihad. On Denmark, for example. Why did the Danes torment their Prince Hamlet? Considering the current political situation, a casus beli like this would satisfy even the League of Nations. No, seriously, I'll buy a million worth of rifles from the British
they love to sell firearms to the tribes
and onward to Denmark. Germany will let us through
in lieu of war reparations. Imagine the tribes invading Copenhagen! I'll lead the charge on a white camel. — Ilya Ilf

Years after the war, after marriages, children, divorces, books, he came to Paris with his wife. He phoned her. It's me. She recognized him at once from the voice. He said, I just wanted to hear your voice. She said, it's me, hello. He was nervous, afraid, as before. His voice suddenly trembled. And with the trembling, suddenly, she heard again the voice of China. He knew she'd begun writing books, he'd heard about it through her mother whom he'd met again in Saigon. And about her younger brother, and he'd been grieved for her. Then he didn't know what to say. And then he told her. Told her that it was as before, that he still loved her, he could never stop loving her, that he'd love her until death. — Marguerite Duras

The sun rises in the east every morning and falls in the west, Ayden. Darknesses are awaken and fate is tested, destinies are foreseen. Thy soul the only enemy, a hero is born. A new light rises once again ... — Nadege Richards

You have no sense of what war is like. You have no idea what it means to see those you love fall. You cannot possibly understand what it is to fight for what you believe, and how sometimes you have to fight with words and dreams after all the weapons have been put away. You serve a cold god, surviving on his power for thousands of years without ever living! — Amelia Atwater-Rhodes

Niko's angular face caught a flicker of firelight and Tempus saw his future there: sharp purpose, discipline, and power in perfect balance; love of man and gods, and mercy transcending all. If war ever wore a more humane face, this one would make it so. — Janet Morris

To all the survivors out there, I want them to know that we are stronger and more resilient than we ever knew. We survived, that should be enough but it isn't. We must work hard to become whole again, to fill our soul with love and inspiration, to live the life that was intended for us before it was disrupted by war and horrors, and help rebuild a world that is better than the one we had just left. — Loung Ung

Love and respect are above any law — Uri Jerzy Nachimson

The theatre will never find itself again except by furnishing the spectator with the truthful precipitates of dreams, in which his taste for crime, his erotic obsessions, his savagery, his chimeras, his utopian sense of life and matter, even his cannibalism, pour out on a level not counterfeit and illusory, but interior. [ ... ] If theatre wants to find itself needed once more, it must present everything in love, crime, war and madness. — Antonin Artaud

I cannot tolerate this age. And I will not. I might have tolerated you and your Catholic Church, and even joined it, if you had remained true to yourself. Now you're part of the age. You've the same fleas as the dogs you've lain down with. I would have felt at home at Mont-Saint-Michel, the Mount of the Archangel with the flaming sword, or with Richard Coeur de Lion at Acre. They believed in a god who said he came not to bring peace but the sword. Make love not war? I'll take war rather than what this age calls love. — Walker Percy

Question (The Great Problematic): Will the ultimate liberation of the erotic from its dialectical relationship with Christianity result in
(a) The freeing of the erotic spirit so that man- and womankind will make love and not war?
or (b) The trivialization of the erotic by its demotion to yet another technique and need-satisfaction of the organism, toward the end that the demoniac spirit of the autonomous self, disappointed in all other sectors of life and in ordinary intercourse with others, is now disappointed even in the erotic, its last and best hope, and so erupts in violence
and in that very violence which is commensurate with the orgastic violence in the best days of the old erotic age
i.e., war? — Walker Percy

The Conditioned Mind / shuts off magical vision and gnosis / gives up freedom, truth, real choices / loses sight of love, trust, and social coherence / loses touch with organic life, gives way to interference // risks personal wellbeing, peace of heart, balance of mind / is tricked into believing we need power, money, lies / and people to lead us by the nose into violence and war / is hypnotised, drugged, poisoned, misinformed. — Jay Woodman

Be safe, she whispered. Then she closed her eyes and said in a low, broken monotone, I love you.
Kailani
Siobhan Fallon — Siobhan Fallon

Peace is not the absence of violence or war; it is the presence of kindness, compassion, love, and care. — Debasish Mridha

Love is a war of lightning,
and two bodies ruined by a single sweetness. — Pablo Neruda

Don't know when my life came to visualising intense pain and tragedy to putting it down on paper, to putting across a message of love in times of abject hate. Thank you everybody and the conspiracy of the stars for showing me this day. To many, many more books, inshallah, and to many more launches. — Simran Keshwani

Here I stand on the brink of war again, a citizen of no place, no time, no country but my own ... and that a land lapped by no sea but blood, bordered only by the outlines of a face long-loved. — Diana Gabaldon

It is something that cannot be explained or even understood until you've lived it; a man can't know or fully appreciate his life until he's been close enough to taste the end of it, and the bonds forged in battle are some of the strongest a man could ever have. We are brothers, the men of ODA 022, and though we didn't have the same blood running through our veins, we had all shed the blood of others together, and knew that none of us would hesitate to step in the way of fate and take a round or jump on a grenade to save one another. — Robert Patrick Lewis

The courage of New England was the courage of conscience. It did not rise to that insane and awful passion, the love of war for itself. — Rufus Choate

Why is physical love bad and spiritual love good? I don't understand. I can't help feeling that they are the same. I would like to boast that I am she who could destroy her body and soul in Gehenna for the sake of a love, for the sake of a passion she could not understand, or for the sake of the sorrow they engendered. — Osamu Dazai

Leaders began to profess their love of peace and to claim that war had been forced upon them.118 As Mueller notes, "No longer was it possible simply and honestly to proclaim like Julius Caesar, 'I came, I saw, I conquered.' Gradually this was changed to 'I came, I saw, he attacked me while I was just standing there looking, I won.' This might be seen as progress."119 — Steven Pinker

Among the calamities of war may be justly numbered the diminution of the love of truth by falsehoods which interest dictates and credulity encourages. A peace will equally leave the warrior and the relater of wars destitute of employment; and I know not whether more is to be dreaded from streets filled with soldiers accustomed to plunder, or from garrets filled with scribblers accustomed to lie. — Samuel Johnson

There are still many souls to be won for Christ," she answered with quiet dignity, eyes downcast - but not, he figured, in humility. "Even here. Perhaps, especially here. Where better to spread his love, than a country just recently ravaged by war?"
"Where better to be kidnapped and sold into slavery, than a country just recently ravaged by war?" with a discernible sneer. — V.S. Carnes

If others are going to make war; we celebrate peace and love. — Kristian Goldmund Aumann

In this world, whenever there is light, there are also shadows. As long as the concept of winners exist, there must also be losers. The selfish desire of wanting to maintain peace causes wars and hatred is born to protect love. — Masashi Kishimoto

Already at sixteen, my mind was a battlefield: my love of pagan beauty, the male nude, at war with my religious faith. A polarity of themes and forms: one spiritual, the other earthly. — Michelangelo

adults usually think you can only feel real love when you're fifty or something and have lived through a war. — Callie James

Damned Beaver/Jeremy is the War, he is every assertion the fucking War has ever made
that we are meant for work and government, for austerity: and these shall take priority over love, dreams, the spirit, the senses and the other second-class trivia that are found among the idle and mindless hours of the day ... Damn them, they are wrong. They are insane. — Thomas Pynchon

Because I am an officer and a gentleman they have given me my notebooks, pen, ink and paper. So I write and wait. I am committed to no cause, I love no living person. The fact that I have no future except what you can count in hours doesn't seem to disturb me unduly. After all, the future whether here or there is equally unknown. So for the waiting days I have only the past to play about with. I can juggle with a series of possibly inaccurate memories, my own interpretation, for what is worth, of events. There is no place for speculation or hope, or even dreams. Strangely enough I think I like it like that. — Jennifer Johnston

Well, well, well. The mighty Uthman-ul-Dosht comes with mercy, and offers peace. These are strange times we live in, eh, Tulkis? Have the Gurkish learned to love their enemies? Or simply fear them?'
'One need not love one's enemy, or even fear him, to desire peace. One need only love oneself.'
'Is that so?'
'It is. I lost two sons in the wars between our peoples. One at Ulrioch in the last war. He was a priest, and burned in the temple there. The other died not long ago, at the siege of Dagoska. He led the charge when the first breach was made.'
Glokta frowned and stretched out his neck. A hail of flatbow bolts. Tiny figures, falling in the rubble. 'That was a brave charge.'
'War is harshest on the brave. — Joe Abercrombie

We do not by any means think it desirable that the kingdom of righteousness and peace should be established on earth (because under any circumstances it would be the kingdom of the profoundest mediocrity and Chinaism); we rejoice in all men, who like ourselves love danger, war and adventure, who do not make compromises, nor let themselves be captured, conciliated and stunted; we count ourselves among the conquerors; we ponder over the need of a new order of things, even of a new slavery for every strengthening and elevation of the type "man" also involves a new form of slavery. — Friedrich Nietzsche

We ought to compliment and not to compete with one another. — Lailah Gifty Akita

America, my love, you are sunlight falling through trees. You are laughter that breaks through sadness. You are the breeze on a too-war day. You are clarity in the midst of confusion.
You are not the world, but you are everything that makes the world good. Without you, my life would still exist, but that's all it would manage to do.
You said that to get things right one of us would have to take a leap of faith. I think I've discovered the canyon that must be leaped, and I hope to find you waiting for me on the other side.
I love you, America.
Yours forever,
Maxon — Kiera Cass

The one consistent policy running through this [Clinton] administration is the love it has lavished on Marxists
food aid for North Korea, diplomatic recognition of the Hanoi regime, chronic kowtowing to Beijing and now doing Castro's dirty work. How can the Clinton gang
which carried the Viet Cong flag during anti-war demonstrations and decorated their dorm rooms with pictures of Che Guevara
not feel contempt for people who insist, with every fiber of their being, that communism is mankind's mortal enemy? — Don Feder

If I became lost in the multiverse, exploring infinite parallel dimensions, my only criterion for settling down somewhere would be whether or not I could find you: and once I did, I'd stay there even if it was a world ruled by giant spider-priests, or one where killer robots won the Civil War, or even a world where sandwiches were never invented, because you'd make it the best of all possible worlds anyway, and plus we could get rich off inventing sandwiches. — Tim Pratt

The taste for luxury, the love of war, the sway of fashion, and the most superficial as well as the deepest passions of the human heart, co-operated — Alexis De Tocqueville

It's odd, isn't it? People die every day and the world goes on like nothing happened. But when it's a person you love, you think everyone should stop and take notice. That they ought to cry and light candles and tell you that you're not alone. — Kristina McMorris

Katy, that the whole world can be involved in this madness we call war, and all the while the flowers and the bees and the seasons keep on doing what they must, wise but never weary in their wait for humanity to come to its senses and remember the beauty of life? It is queer, but my love and longing for the world are always deepened by my absence from it; it's wondrous, don't you think, that a person can swing from despair to gleeful hunger, and that even during these dark days there is happiness to be found in the smallest things?) Anyway, — Kate Morton

At that time a lot of young men didn't want to go to the war and kill. This guy that I fell in love with was one of those so he escaped to Canada and I followed him. — Ann Wilson

Peace! and no longer from its brazen portals The blast of War's great organ shakes the skies! But beautiful as songs of the immortals, The holy melodies of love arise. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

We made love on the living room floor with the noise in the background of a televised war and in that defeaning pleasure i thought i heard someone say if we walk away they'll walk away — Conor Oberst

Zeal is that pure and heavenly flame,The fire of love supplies ;While that which often bears the name,Is self in a disguise.True zeal is merciful and mild,Can pity and forbear ;The false is headstrong, fierce and wild,And breathes revenge and war. — John Newton

Why did people fall in love?he wondered as he watched Rock and Doris pretend to do just that. Obviously, it made people ridiculous and not just in movies from the sixties. There had to be some basis in real life or no one would ever have made a silly comedy about love. Yeah, there were also movies about love that weren't comedies, but in those movies people acted ridiculous for a while and then someone announced the were going to die, or they had to go off to war, or oops I forgot to mention my wife. People stopped acting ridiculous and starting acting really serious and sad, sad because the ridiculous part was over. How could people want this foolishness in their lives? — Marshall Thornton

I'm starting to think that most villains aren't evil - they are just misundertood.
Or victims of that manipulative force: Love.
Love causes war and causes death, breaks souls and breaks lives. It runs people into the ground, makes them behave like moronic, immoral beasts, before it dances off, leaving only destruction in its wake - hearts blown wide open for the whole world to see.
Love puts the blame on the poor souls who succumb to it.
Love, that ultimate villainess. She makes examples of us all.
And yet we still come back for more.
We keep playing the role she gives us.
For one more chance to feel alive. — Karina Halle

She was smooth and beautiful under his rough, callused hands-an amorous balm to soothe the ugliness of war. — Madeline Martin

Love isn't a quilt. Love isn't patient, love isn't kind. Love is a game, a chase, a thrill. Love is wild and war-like, and every man and woman must fight for themselves. — Lauren Blakely

I was really interested in how marriages work, how you can, you know, be in love with somebody and spend many years with your lives intertwined, but in the end another soul can be fundamentally unknowable. And I think that the stress of war, when one party goes away and the other has to deal at home, is a really testing time in a lot of marriages. — Geraldine Brooks

I love cosmology: there's something uplifting about viewing the entire universe as a single object with a certain shape. What entity, short of God, could be nobler or worthier of man's attention than the cosmos itself? Forget about interest rates, forget about war and murder, let's talk about space. Rudy Rucker21 — John D. Barrow

Why did you do this?" He was shaking. "Just tell me why."
I tried to muster up some of the righteous indignation that I'd felt on Friday night as I said, "You knocked over my gravestone!" But even to my ears the words sounded tinny and pathetic.
Dan's face was pale. "It was just a gravestone, Chelsea. And it was a mistake. I told you that already, and I meant it. I've never lied to you. My God, can't you tell the difference between a gravestone and a person you love? Can't you tel which one matters?"
But if I had to point to the real problem in my life, it's that I've never known the difference between a gravestone and a person I love. I have never known which is which until it's too late.
"All's fair in love and war," I reminded him, aiming for Tawny's tone. But my voice came out sounding just like me.
"Oh, yeah? And which is this?" he asked. "Love or war? — Leila Sales

To the traveller imbued with a feeling for the historical and poetical, so inseparately interwined in the annals of romantic Spain, the Alhambra is a much an object of devotion as is the Caaba to all true Moslems. How many legends and traditions, true and fabulous, - how many songs and ballards, Arabian and Spanish, of love and war and chivalry, are associated with this Oriental pile! — Washington Irving

You're going to come across some truly gifted people in your lifetime that seem to know all the answers. However, they lost their personal relationship with God, along the way. Love them anyways, and do everything you can to help them restore that relationship. They are fighting a war that you don't know anything about. — Shannon L. Alder

The kids are saying 'Make Love, Not War',
and I'm beginning to think they're right.
For war costs millions of dollars a day,
and love
just a few bucks a night! — Nipsey Russell

In a word, and bluntly: as they walked around Sankt Pauli, it came to Pelletier and Espinoza that the search for Archimboldi could never fill their lives. They could read him, they could study him, they could pick him apart, but they couldn't laugh or be sad with him, partly because Archimboldi was always far away, partly because the deeper they went into his work, the more it devoured its explorers. In a word: in Sankt Pauli and later at Mrs. Bubis's house, hung with photographs of the late Mr. Bubis and his writers, Pelletier and Espinoza understood that what they wanted to make was love, not war. — Roberto Bolano

I had only to remember that centuries before, men fell in battle for the daughter of Troy, that passions carried greater weight than decorum. It took so little to prove that human life and property are devastatingly temporary. All she had to do was lie down for a prince. They burned the city to the ground. — Brenna Yovanoff

Like what? The things Literature was all about: love, sex, morality, friendship, happiness, suffering, betrayal, adultery, good and evil, heroes and villains, guilt and innocence, ambition, power, justice, revolution, war, fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, the individual against society, success and failure, murder, suicide, death, God. And barn owls. — Julian Barnes

May humanity replace hate,injustice & tyranny with peace,love and unity for all nations! May we the citizens of the beautiful earth ... see war NO more! — Timothy Pina

In a world where no one listens, where no one seems to care, where hatred is greater than love, where hearts are hardened by vengeance and pride, where violence is preferable to peace, what else is there for him to do but heal the wounded, and bury the dead, in a war that could go on forever? — Ben Okri

A grin spread across her face. He'd not only come for her, he loved her enough to start a galactic war. How cool was that? Nothing says I love you like bloodshed and violence. — Eve Langlais

She was tired of being told how it was by this generation, who'd botched things so badly. They'd sold their children a pack of lies: God and country. Love your parents. All is fair. And then they'd sent those boys, her brother, off to fight a great monster of a war that maimed and killed and destroyed whatever was inside them. Still they lied, expecting her to mouth the words and play along. Well, she wouldn't. She knew now that the world was a long way from fair. She knew the monsters were real. — Libba Bray

The real difference between love and war, somebody usually wons at the end of the war. — Matt Trevitz

A story: A man fires a rifle for many years, and he goes to war. And afterward he turns the rifle in at the armory, and he believes he's finished with the rifle. But no matter what else he might do with his hands, love a woman, build a house, change his son's diaper; his hands remember the rifle. — Anthony Swofford

I love 'The War Of The Roses,' especially as my husband is in it! I've often said to him it would be great to remake that with me and him in it, because then we could really get down to some serious business. — Catherine Zeta-Jones

These warriors of the Sacred Band were inscrutable; they loved their war and death and picking through the bones of time to sort out right from wrong, good from bad, holy from profane, honor from dishonor. — Janet Morris

Meet the bonobos, the rare and marvelous "make love not war" great apes who swing through the trees as well as with each other. — Susan Block

She, with her affection and her gaiety, had been largely responsible for him having rediscovered the meaning of life, her love had driven him to the far corners of the Earth, because he needed to be rich enough to buy some land and live in peace with her for the rest of their days. It was his utter confidence in this fragile creature, that had made him fight with honor, because he knew that after a battle he could forget all the horrors of war in her arms, and that, despite all the women he had known, only there in her arms could he close his eyes and sleep like a child. — Paulo Coelho

In four short years he has turned our country from a prosperous nation at peace into a desperately indebted nation at war. But so what? He is the President of the United States, and you're not. Love it or leave it. — Hunter S. Thompson

If feels good to live after death. It feels good to not be dead. It feels so good to find myself alive and flying home. The music plays in my ears and I float further and further away from war. Fucking Baghdad. — Michael Hastings

I want to make love, but my hair smells of war and running and running. — Warsan Shire

The power of the artform is stronger than stone, the poet says, and chooses the sonnet, a form concerned with argument and persuasion, to say so. This sonnet, he says, will last longer than any gravestone-and you'll be made shinier, brighter, by it. In this form it will-and therefore you will-avoid destruction by war, history, time generally; it'll even keep you alive after death; in fact it'll form a place for you to live, not die, where you'll be seen in the eyes of and the context of this love right to the end of time. — Ali Smith

This was because their English teachers would wince and cover their ears and give them flunking grades and so on whenever they failed to speak like English aristocrats before the First World War. Also: they were told that they were unworthy to speak or write their language if they couldn't love or understand incomprehensible novels and poems and plays about people long ago and far away, such as Ivanhoe. *** The black people would not put up with this. They went on talking English every which way. They refused to read books they couldn't understand - on the grounds they couldn't understand them. They would ask such impudent questions as, Whuffo I want to read no Tale of Two Cities? Whuffo? — Kurt Vonnegut

At this time, we should renew our faith in God. We celebrate the hour in which God came to man. It is fitting that we should turn to Him ... But there are many others who are away from their homes and their loved ones on this day. Thousands of our boys are on the cold and dreary battlefield of Korea. But all of us, at home, at war, wherever we may be, are within reach of God's love and power. We can all pray. We should all pray. — Harry S. Truman

This new war, like the previous one, would be a test of the power of machines against people and places; whatever its causes and justifications, it would make the world worse. This was true of that new war, and it has been true of every new war since ...
I knew too that this new war was not even new but was only the old one come again. And what caused it? It was caused, I thought, by people failing to love one another, failing to love their enemies. — Wendell Berry