“Like all young about to go to war, I did not want to hear talk about the grand illusion. If war was so bad, why did those that served in one never indicate that they regretted having done so? Think of the images conjured up by mention of the horns blowing along the road to Roncevaux. Which way lays greater claim on the human heart, The Song of Roland, or cloistering oneself inside inertia and ennui while the world is being set alight?”

“This is how it will go, I thought. They’ll wage a war of gradual attrition that is the equivalent of death in the Iron Maiden. Their resources will be suspicion and anxiety and inculcation of self doubt and feelings of personal violation. Like the blindfolded man being broken on the wheel, we will never know where the next blow is coming from. And the men behind all this will do it with a phone call they’ll forget two minutes after they hang up.”

Book of Psalms: For, lo, the wicked bend their bow, they make ready their arrow upon the string, that they may privily shoot at the upright in heart.

“Draw a line the sand. But don’t tell anybody where it is. Don’t let your feelings show. Don’t let others know you’ve been hurt. No matter what they do, don’t react until they come over that line. Then you drop them in their tracks.”

“It lives in the breast of our fellow man and takes on many disguises, but its intention is always the same: to rob the innocent of their faith in humanity and to destroy the light and happiness that all of us seek.”

James Lee Burke: Wayfaring Stranger.