George Packer Quotes

The American war-writing tradition is a proud one and booming in this era of the Global War on Terror - at least in the nonfiction realm. Hundreds of memoirs and press accounts from Iraq and Afghanistan have been published since 9/11.

I've just finished a series of Olivia Manning novels. She's best known for two trilogies: Balkan Trilogy and Levant Trilogy. The six novels are continuous and contain the same set of characters. They are based on Manning's experiences in Eastern Europe and Egypt during the Second World War. Each novel is a wonderful picture of the peculiar British expatriate culture and what was happening during the war. She's one of those brilliant women who write very well about domestic relationships. All the books are slim, and it's easy to gallop through them.

I picked up this book called Blue Mountain, supposed to be a really good book on the Civil War.

Sixty years ago this week Hitler invaded Poland. This led to the creation of The History Channel.

I would like my book to give people insight to the war before and after, but I don't think anyone could read my book and suddenly make up her mind about the war. I want to write for everybody.

This book is not about heroes. English poetry is not yet fit to speak of them. Nor is it about deeds, or lands, nor anything about glory, honour, might, majesty, dominion, or power, except War. Above all I am not concerned with Poetry. My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity.

I collect old first and second World War artifacts and things. I'm a little secret history nerd. I've been lucky enough to do quite a few war movies too so I've taken little things off each film.

I am reading "The Yellow Birds" by Kevin Powers and "Redeployment" by Phil Klay . Both Powers and Klay are Iraq War vets. Klay's stories are remarkable.

Ever since wars have been fought, guys have been writing their stories.

I had a question. "Why does the name Pearl Harbor sound so familiar?" The lieutenant colonel's eyes narrowed. "Pearl Harbor is the most famous U.S. military base in the world," he said crisply. "It's the only place on U.S. soil that has been attacked in a wars, since the Revolutionary War." None of this was ringing a bell, but you already know I'm totally uneducated. Gazzy leaned over to whisper, "It was a movie with Ben Affleck." Ah. Now I remembered.

I can only tell you this and I used to speak about it all the time, we have a Navy that hasn't been in this position since World War I.

If a story seems moral, do not believe it. If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie.

My dad was in the Swedish armed forces, he was always reading up on different weapons from the Americans and Soviets. When I was a kid, I was in bed looking at his books, reading about the Red Army. So I was very aware of it. I had an interest in military matters ever since.

I'm reading "Team of Rivals'' I'll probably ending up reading a bunch of books about the Civil War. But I think my all-time favorite book about the war is the novel, "The Killer Angels'' by Michael Shaara.

I read all the books I could find about manners, and the extraordinary thing was, in all books up to the end of the Second World War, most were directed at how to comport yourself in the presence of the ladies.

The instant you say All Quiet On The Western Front people remember that great 20th century classic book on war, a book about a school boy turned into a soldier overnight.

shane: so is world war fifteen over out there? claire:i think so

I felt implicated in American affairs.Outraged at the blatant lies about Iraqs involvement in al Qaeda, at the regimes arrogance and stupidity, Guantnamo Bay and all the rest of it. But the poems at the start of District and Circle Anahorish 1944, The Aerodromearent particularly aimed as criticism. On the contrary, there's a recognition of the big contribution to world order made in Europe during World War II.

We English majors...need to promote public libraries as a tool in the war against terror. How many readers of Edith Wharton have engaged in terroristic acts? I challenge you to name one...Do we need to wait until our cities lie in smoking ruins before we wake up to the fact that a first-class public library is a vital link in national defense?

Oddly enough, most of the books written about the subject aren't very good because they just focus on the more hateful movies that they did very early, early on when they were trying to, you know, get Germany into the war, whether it be anti-Semitic movies like "Jud Suss," or "The Eternal Jew," or movies made against the Polish to help, you know, create sympathy for them to invade Poland. You know, there'd be movies where there would be some German girl living in Poland who's raped by the Polish or something.

The lucidity of the battle narratives, the vigor of the prose, the strong feeling for the men from generals to privates who did the fighting, are all controlled by a constant sense of how it happened and what it was all about. Foote has the novelist's feeling for character and situation, without losing the historian's scrupulous regard for recorded fact. The Civil War is likely to stand unequalled.

There was no really good true war book during the entire four years of the war. The only true writing that came through during the war was in poetry. One reason for this is that poets are not arrested as quickly as prose writers.

For years, Mount Holyoke professor Joseph 'Full Metal Jacket' Ellis had been regaling students, interviewers and friends with gripping stories of his service in Vietnam.

Every book that comes out, every article that comes out, talks about how - while it may have been a "mistake" or an "unwise effort" - the United States was defending South Vietnam from North Vietnamese aggression. And they portray those who opposed the war as apologists for North Vietnam. That's standard to say. The purpose is obvious: to obscure the fact that the United States did attack South Vietnam and the major war was fought against South Vietnam.

In the account book of the Great War the page recording the Russian losses has been ripped out. The figures are unknown. Five millions, or eight? We ourselves know not. All we know is that, at times, fighting the Russians, we had to remove the piles of enemy bodies from before our trenches, so as to get a clear field of fire against new waves of assault.