James Nachtwey Quotes

Words that are saturated with lies or atrocity, do not easily resume life.

Only the tortured can understand those who have been tortured.

It's hard to think what should make your blood boil more - what happened to Billy Ray or what didn't happen to those who abused him. It's something we can't ignore.

I saw hell. The hospital had divided and conquered pretty successfully.

It makes me actually quite angry to think about people writing about torture with a sort of relish. Horrible.

There are people who are suffering beyond description. They are innocent people, they didn't bring this upon themselves. They are the victims of the sins of other people. And while it's hard to see, it's important to understand that these people exist.

Never mind a world that can't see past brutality.

As freedom-loving people across the globe hope for an end to tyranny, we will never forget the enormous suffering of the Holocaust.

No one has ever suffered from his people as I have.

It's good to focus on the universal suffering that goes on in any war. Whatever the right and wrongs of the war, there is always universal suffering.

I remember, May 1944: I was 15-and-a-half, and I was thrown into a haunted universe where the story of the human adventure seemed to swing irrevocably between horror and malediction.

There is little for the great part of the history of the world except the bitter tears of pity and the hot tears of wrath.

Perhaps we cannot prevent this world from being a world in which children are tortured, but we can reduce the number of tortured children.

Crimes against human rights, never confessed and never publicly denounced, are a poison which destroys the possibility of a friendship between nations.

The hatred and contempt for men, women and children that was manifested in the Shoah was a crime against God and against humanity.

Non-fictionalised accounts of horrific accidents, bereavement, and the outrages of officialdom tend to move us deeply.

I cannot bear to live where there is so much injustice and I cannot do something about it. What kind of a torturous life is that?

Cambodia was not a mistake; it was a crime. The world is diminished by the experience.

I am filled with fear and tormented with terrible visions of pain. Everywhere people are hurting one another, the planet is rampant with injustices, whole societies plunder groups of their own people, mothers imprison sons, children perish while brothers war. O, woe.

I find that truly heartbreaking that, like, it's such a common, constant thing in people's lives - a brutal abuse of people by other people, and it's just accepted.

What have they done to me? What have they done to me? What have they done to me? What have they done to me? What have they done to me? What have they done to me? What have they done to me? What have they done to me? What have they done to me? What have they done to me? What have they done to me? What have they done to me? What have they done to me? What have they done to me? What have they done to me? What have they done to me? What have they done to me?

This is what it means to be a slave; to be abused and bear it; compelled by violence to suffer wrong.

I don't inflict horrors on readers. In my research, I've uncovered truly terrible documentations of cruelty and torture, but I leave that offstage. I always pull back and let the reader imagine the details. We all know to one degree or another the horrors of war.

I cannot tell how much my heart suffered for my people while at Leavenworth.