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Phil Klay

Phil Klay Quotes

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Famous Phil Klay Quotes

“Everyone standing on the road as the body went past had been so utterly silent, so still. There was no sound or movement except for the slow steps of the Corpsmen and the steady progress of the corpse. It’d been an image of death from another world. But now I know where that corpse was headed, to the old gunny at PRP. And if there was a wedding ring, the gunny would have slowly worked it off the stiff, dead fingers. He would have gathered all the personal effects and prepared the body for transport. Then it would have gone by air to TQ. And as it was unloaded off the bird, the Marines would have stood silent and still, just as we had in Fallujah. And they would have put it on a C-130 to Kuwait. And they would have stood silent and still in Kuwait. And they would have stood silent and still in Germany, and silent and still at Dover Air Force Base. Everywhere it went, Marines and sailors and soldiers and airmen would have stood at attention as it traveled to the family of the fallen, where the silence, the stillness, would end.”

GriefRespectFallen Soldiers
Book:Redeployment
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“Everything is uncertain. Friends become enemies, health becomes sickness, wealth becomes ruin. But we two, we will create one small space of order in the chaos. I will rest on you, you on me, and we will not break. And in that small space, we will have room for human feelings, maybe cruel, maybe tender, full of arguments or never-ending kindnesses, but more important than the nature of the love is the space we create for it to exist.”

LoveGrowthRelationshipsLegacyTeamworkPartnership
Book:Missionaries
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“Sin is a lonely thing, a worm wrapped around the soul, shielding it from love, from joy, from communion with fellow men and with God. The sense that I am alone, that none can hear me, none can understand, that no one answers my cries, it is a sickness over which, to borrow from Bernanos, “the vast tide of divine love, that sea of living, roaring flame which gave birth to all things, passes vainly.” Your job, it seems, would be to find a crack through which some sort of communication can be made, one soul to another.”

MenMadeSoulSeemsWould BeJobsJoySinAnswersSeaCryDivineCommunicationBirthAll ThingsLonelyFellowsFlamesSicknessCracksTidesCommunionWormsDivine LoveFellow ManRoaring
Book:Redeployment
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