Ishmael Beah Quotes

The disasters of war can be infinitely eerie and poignant.

Wars break things; they break stories.

It is the youth who must inherit the tribulation, the sorrow... that are the aftermath of war.

The War will leave none of us as it found us.

My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity.

First and foremost, I would like to extend my deepest sympathies to the family of Michael Brown. As I have said in the past, I know that, regardless of the circumstances here, they lost a loved one to violence. I know the pain that accompanies such a loss knows no bounds.

Losing my parents was the most crushing thing that ever happened to me. I lost my dad when I was 26, and it changed my life entirely.

Wars are detested by mothers.

Cancer has been a dark thread that has run throughout my life. It's taken my friends, my parents. My beautiful son.

I was watching the news that day when the bulletin came on that my father had been shot. I prayed. I asked God, 'Please don't let my daddy die.'

Yeah? Okay," she said, staring up into the stars. "Let's see. You know how, at the end of Romeo and Juliet, Juliet wakes up in the crypt and Romeo's already dead? He thought she was dead so he killed himself right next to her?" "Yeah. That was awesome." A pause, followed by "Ow," suggested elbow punctuation on the part of Mik. Karou ignored it. "Well, imagine if she woke up and he was still alive, but..." She swallowed, waiting out a tremor in her voice. "But he had killed her whole family. And burned her city. And killed and enslaved her people.

People talk of sorrow as if it is soft, a thing of water and tears. But true sorrow is not soft. True sorrow is a thing of fire, and rock. It burns your heart, crushes your soul under the weight of mountains. It destroys, and even if you keep breathing, keep going, you die.

And Hermione was struggling to her feet in the wreckage, and three red-headed men were grouped on the ground where the wall had blasted apart. Harry grabbed Hermione's hand as they staggered and stumbled over stone and wood. 'No - no - no!' someone was shouting. 'No! Fred! No!' And Percy was shaking his brother, and Ron was kneeling beside them, and Fred's eyes stared without seeing, the ghost of his last laugh still etched upon his face.

When my young men began the killing, my heart was hurt.

There's no tragedy in life like the death of a child. Things never get back to the way they were.

At the bottom, all wars are the same because they involve death and maiming and wounding, and grieving mothers, fathers, sons and daughters.

When I was 12 years old, my father was killed. I lost a loved one to violence. The pain was because I lost my father. It didn't matter that he was an officer... It shaped my life. If anything, it made me a strong advocate for the victims of violence.

There is nothing to be compared to this, 'cause we lost our brother, our hero. The world is mourning. We are mourning. The fans are mourning. It is unreal. Unbelievable.

So war is an extremely sad business, because the majority of people don't want to be in it.

My father died in my arms. That's tumult. That's everything exploding.

Losing a child is probably the singular most horrible thing.

I was scared when I lost my mother, my father, my brother, my sister.

I lost my parents when I was fairly young.

War is the domain of physical exertion and suffering.

The death of my daughter is a subject I talk about briefly because there is nothing more tragic.