Quotes about Conflict

Shorty felt about the war the same way I and most ghetto Negroes did: Whitey owns everything. He wants us to go and bleed for him? Let him fight.

What do you want, rational minds or irrational?" Rational minds. "What sort of rational minds, calm or disturbed?" Calm. "How can you acquire calm, rational minds?" We already have them. "Really? Then why are you squabbling among yourselves?" —Socrates

Not to shrug off a friend's resentment—even unjustified resentment—but try to put things right.

An unjust peace is better than a just war.

Where were we? I've forgotten. He was deciding whether to cut her throat or love her forever. Right. Yes. The usual choices.

We have begun to slam doors, and to throw things. I throw my purse, an ashtray, a package of chocolate chips, which breaks on impact. We are picking up chocolate chips for days. Jon throws a glass of milk, the milk, not the glass: he knows his own strength, as I do not. He throws a box of Cheerios, unopened. The things I throw miss, although they are worse things. The things he throws hit, but are harmless. I begin to see how the line is crossed, between histrionics and murder.

Even sex was no longer what it had once been, though he was still as addicted to it as ever. He felt jerked around by his own dick, as if the rest of him was merely an inconsequential knob that happened to be attached to one end of it. Maybe the thing would be happier if left to roam around on its own.

Wars happen because the ones who start them think they can win.

They were wearing camouflage gear direct from central casting, and if it hadn't been for the guns I might have laughed, not yet realizing that female laughter would soon be in short supply.

I admired my mother in some ways, although things between us were never easy. She expected too much from me, I felt. She expected me to vindicate her life for her, and the choices she'd made. I didn't want to live my life on her terms. I didn't want to be the model offspring, the incarnation of her ideas. We used to fight about that. I am not your justification for existence, I said to her once.

An eye for an eye only leads to more blindness.

It was Crake preserving his dignity, because the alternative would have been losing it.