27 Quotes by Anthony Shadid

In any kind of conflict, you have a certain dehumanization that comes along with it. And it’s important as a reporter, a writer, a journalist, to try to restore humanity.

On the flip side, I enjoy covering the Arab world, I’ve spent my entire career here in the Middle East, but I would never call myself a war correspondent.

I had a great childhood. I think writers are always better off when they have more twisted childhoods, but I didn’t.

Sometimes it is better to imagine the past than to remember it.

Arabic also has a far greater facility to communicate sarcasm, and it can be employed precisely, or with pitch-perfect irony.

I wondered whether he was trying to return to a place that no longer existed. Isn’t that always the case when we try to go home again?

I should be in Beirut, I thought, working as a journalist, but another part of me was so wary of that old life of guns and misery. I did not want to see Tyre again, or Qana, or Baghdad. I wanted to do nothing more than move dirt from one place to another.

What befalls a trained soldier during combat between nations is one thing; what occurs at home – on our street, in our yard, and on our land, to family – is not the same. In Qana, those who died would not flee, would not leave their homes. That is what bayt means.

After life is bent, torn, exploded, there are shattered pieces that do not heal for years, if at all. What is left are scars and something else – shame, I suppose, shame for letting it all continue.