71 Quotes by Kevin Powers

Joining the military is not to be taken lightly. You’re putting every part of yourself at risk, not just your body but your moral and spiritual centre.

As human beings, we have the blessing and the curse that we’re able to adapt to almost anything. No matter how extreme the circumstances you’re in, they become normal.

I understood that ‘The Yellow Birds’ would be a peculiar representation of the experience of being at war. I intended it to be so.

I knew that at least a few of the stars I saw were probably gone already, collapsed into nothing. I felt like I was looking at a lie. But I didn’t mind. The world makes liars of us all.

The male role models I had all seemed to have been in the military. My father served in the army. My uncle was in the Marine Corps. Both of my grandfathers served in WWII. There weren’t any career soldiers in my family, but when I was young it seemed like a way of arriving at adulthood.

I understand that it’s incredibly difficult to watch what’s happening on the news every day and not become inured to it. I’ve fallen victim to that myself, wanting to look away.

I wanted to go to sleep and stay there, that’s all. A passive wish, one I didn’t push. Sure, there is a fine line between not wanting to wake up and actually wanting to kill yourself, and while I discovered you can walk that line for a long while without even noticing, anybody who is around you surely will...

It’s not just: you get off the plane, you’re back home, everything’s fine. Maybe the physical danger ends, but soldiers are still deeply at risk of being injured in a different way.

I wanted something that I could look back on and say, yes, you were fighting too, you burned to be alive, and whatever failure or accident of nature caused you to be killed could be explained by something other than the fact that I’d missed your giving up.