“I thought fleetingly of Anne, how the faces changed but the act was always the same, the need was always the same, no one drew a line between the sex you bought and the love you made, and your body could not tell the difference.” DesireSexLoversProstitution Book:Cage Life Source: Cage Life
“Just remember: when you lose, don't lose the lesson.” WarWisdomKnowledgeLessonsLosingWar QuotesQuotes On Loss Book:Sinner's Cross Source: Sinner's Cross
“In the years that I could not see him, I came to know my father through the medium of photography. My perceptions of him were forged on black-and-white squares that stole an instant out of history and immortalized it between the pages of a family album. When I summoned up the image of the man, it came to me frozen, black-bordered, flat. He stood pale above the creases of his uniform, framed in the foamy wake of some ship, drops of sunlight caught in the buttons on his jacket. He winked at me from the liberty ports of countless exotic places. In an atrocious hand he scrawled stilted, affectionate words to the stranger that bore his name and his features, telling of adventures far away, misbehavings under suns hotter than that which shone over the Greater German Reich.” WarTimeChildhoodPhotographyThe Sea Book:Shadows and Glory Source: Shadows and Glory
“Love? What's that? Preferring someone to someone else? If that's love, then yes, she loved you. Of course, if that's love...then I love you. At least for tonight.” SexLove QuotesLove Quotes And SayingsNoirNoir FictionNoir Style Book:Knuckle Down Source: Knuckle Down
“It wasn’t fair, but maybe Tommy was right on that score. Maybe a man didn’t have no right to ask for fair. Maybe a man made fair for himself.” GangstersGangster HeroCriminal Minds Book:Pleas and Thank Yous Source: Pleas and Thank Yous
“A good platoon sergeant, in the lieutenant’s mind, ought act like Kato on 'The Green Hornet' and not a disapproving uncle with a taste for the strap.” OfficersWw2SergeantsArmy Life Book:Sinner's Cross Source: Sinner's Cross
“This is your platoon sergeant, Halleck. This is your platoon medic, Holzinger. This is your radioman, Loomis, and this is your call-sign, Decoy Red One Six. These are your squad leaders—Ryerson, Spicer, and Keesey. Tonight’s password is 'Ontario.' Your position extends from the edge of that gully to the blowdown over there. We don’t expect a push here, so your job is to keep the Germans from infiltrating. That means a one hundred percent alert all night, every night. Listen for the enemy. Don’t make any noise at all or you’ll take fire from both sides. Don’t smoke, the Germans will see the light and blow you to hell. Don’t fall asleep, you’ll wake up with your throat cut. Don’t give any orders, you don’t know what you’re doing. Let Halleck run things until you know the score. A guide will relieve you at 0630 hours exactly. If you hear anyone come up behind you before that, shoot him.” WarOfficersWar QuotesWw2First Day Book:Sinner's Cross Source: Sinner's Cross
“Kraut was a stand-up guy in the old tradition, in a strange way reminiscent of my father in his steadfast refusal to abandon a position once he had taken it. It was a quality I lacked, and so admired in others when they weren't using it to beat me to the canvas or break my heart.” StubbornnessHonorable MenStand Up Guy Book:Cage Life Source: Cage Life
“Hell is full of polite men with bone saws.” Civil WarCivil War FictionCivil War History Book:The Shroud Source: The Shroud
“Raus did not look up at the faces. An officer learned not to look at the faces. It was easier if you thought of them as bodies, as tools, means to an end. But just what the end was Raus could no longer say.” WarNazismWw2Means And EndsMeans Justifying The Ends Book:Nosferatu Source: Nosferatu
“Gene was six feet three inches of lean muscle and hard bone enclosing a brain that had only one object: the acquisition of power.” PowerCrime FictionNoirNoir FictionNoir Style Book:Knuckle Down Source: Knuckle Down
“Anne held out her arms. I don't want to say I flew into them. I wasn't in condition for flying. Or running. Or even dignified limping. Fell towards the center of gravity in my own personal universe. And if our lips met on the way down, was that any fault of mine?” Love QuotesLove Quotes And SayingsCrime FictionNoirNoir FictionNoir Style Book:Knuckle Down Source: Knuckle Down
“Halleck came from people who regarded a slight change of facial expression as adequate to convey the pain of a severed limb.” PainTexasStoicismToughnessWw2HardnessStoicism QuotesWw2 Books Book:Sinner's Cross Source: Sinner's Cross
“This cramped little space that stank of earth and smoke and sweat, that dripped water during every hard rain, and whose floor was often a half-frozen soup of mud and sunflower seeds and straw, now seemed to him more comfortable than Ketterling’s HQ could ever be, and he knew why. Here, surrounded by the weapons hanging from nails by their straps, the boxes of hand grenades, the cut-down artillery shells filled with cigarette butts, the crumpled moisture-bloated magazines and greasy playing cards, one lived an honest life. You couldn’t get that back home anymore. The radio and the newspapers were full of lies that would have been insulting even if the streets hadn’t been full of rubble and the air with the shriek of air-raid sirens, and it wasn’t enough for the government that the people merely endure it all, bombs and lies, without objecting. They had to believe the lies, had to parrot them back with sickly smiles plastered on their faces, lest they be branded defeatists and be taken away. It wasn’t like that here. Nickolaus wanted it to be, but it wasn’t. Here, a man might be hungry, he might itch with lice, he might sting with pain from cuts that never healed, he might be empty-headed with fatigue and half-deafened from noise, but he always knew precisely where he stood—with his comrades and with the enemy. There were no intrigues, no politics, no flag-waving. A man never looked you in the eyes and told you black was white, or worse yet, demanded that you agree that black was white. There was no need because he had already asked you to die for him, and once you had agreed, what need was there for words?” LifeTruthTruth QuotesQuotes On LifeWw2Ww2 BooksQuotes On War Book:Sinner's Cross Source: Sinner's Cross
“The course she was on was as fixed and unalterable as the trajectory of a bullet, but you could see she did not believe that. No one in the life ever believed it. They saw a dozen, a hundred, a thousand people precede them into the trap, saw how unvarying and pitiless the end was, and with all that fresh in their minds they did the same, of their own free will.” CrimeMafiaCriminal MindsHustlers Ambition Book:Cage Life Source: Cage Life
“Fighting is a lot like making love. Timing is everything.” SexViolenceSexuality Funny Book:Cage Life Source: Cage Life