A Quote by Catherynne M. Valente

No one is now what they were before the war. There’s just no getting any of it back. — © Catherynne M. Valente
No one is now what they were before the war. There’s just no getting any of it back.
What we went to World War II for, at least in my mind, was not getting taken care of. It was supposed to be a brave new world, but we were getting back into the old ruts, and we were in a cold war with Russia.
I've been playing videogames since before my career in this business, but what happened is several videogame companies were recruiting students back then and I applied with barely any hope of getting accepted to any of the companies. However, I got accepted! Although my path was already set to become a piano instructor, I chose the path of videogames instead. My parents cried, my friends were worried and my teacher was stunned (we're talking about way back when game music wasn't as popular as it is these days).
In Iraq, until before the war, the women were scientists, museum directors, doctors. I'm not valourising Saddam Hussein or the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, which was brutal and killed hundreds of thousands of people - it was the Soviet Union's Vietnam. I'm just saying that now, in these new wars, whole countries have slipped into mayhem - the women have just been pushed back into their burqas - and not by choice.
Donald Trump is now at war with Jeff Sessions. He`s now at war with James Comey. He`s at war with Andrew McCabe, and he`s at war with Robert Mueller. He`s attacked all of those people in this New York Times extraordinary interview. And I`ll just remind people that the last time Donald Trump went to war with an establishment, that was the intelligence establishment, he started that back in December 2016 , that did not work out for him well.
I went to preaching again. The sermons were not different; I did not present any new truths, and yet hundreds were converted. I would not now be placed back where I was before that blessed experience if you should give me all the world - it would be as dust in the balance.
No capitalists after any war were ever so well paid for money loaned to the nation that carried it on. No class of money-makers ever gained such prosperity by any other war, as our War for the Union brought to the money-getters of America. All this was due in great measure to the rank and file of the Union army. Now let no rich man haggle with a needy veteran of that war about his right to a pension!
In 2001, we were told that the war in Afghanistan was a feminist mission. The marines were liberating Afghan women from the Taliban. Can you really bomb feminism into a country? And now, after 25 years of brutal war - 10 years against the Soviet occupation, 15 years of US occupation - the Taliban is riding back to Kabul and will soon be back to doing business with the United States.
The kid who didn't go back when he should have and now goes back when he shouldn't. The kid called Zombie, who made a promise, and if he breaks that promise, the war is over - not the big war, but the war that matters, the one in the battlefield of his heart. Because promises matter. They matter now more than ever.
We've committed many war crimes in Vietnam - but I'll tell you something interesting about that. We were committing war crimes in World War II, before the Nuremberg trials were held and the principle of war crimes was stated.
Most of us who were opposed to the war, especially in the early '60's - the war we were opposed to was the war on South Vietnam which destroyed South Vietnam's rural society. The South was devastated. But now anyone who opposed this atrocity is regarded as having defended North Vietnam. And that's part of the effort to present the war as if it were a war between South Vietnam and North Vietnam with the United States helping the South. Of course it's fabrication. But it's "official truth" now.
Before the war there were many who were more or less ignorant of the international labor movement but who nevertheless turned to it for salvation when the threat of war arose. They hoped that the workers would never permit a war.
Before the Civil War, Canada was at the top of the underground railroad. If you made it into Canada, you were safe unless someone came and hauled you back. That was also true during the Vietnam War for draft resisters.
You have to take chances for peace, just as you must take chances in war. Some say that we were brought to the verge of war. Of course we were brought to the verge of war. The ability to get to the verge without getting into the war is the necessary art... If you try to run away from it, if you are scared to go to the brink, you are lost. We've had to look it square in the face... We walked to the brink and we looked it in the face. We took strong action.
I could not bounce back from my divorce - emotionally - I just could not bounce back. With any bad situations I’d experienced before - a bad game or my two previous divorces - I got over them. This time I just could not get out of the hole. The anxiety attacks were frequent and extensive. I had weight loss, which I’d never had before. I couldn’t stop crying. And if I wasn’t crying, I was angry, bitter, hateful and mean-spirited. I couldn’t sleep - couldn’t concentrate. It just got crazy.
What I want to do right now is give hip hop back to the hood. Before it was a neighborhood thing where it belonged to the hood and the rappers were reporting and there were rules and parameters. Now it seems like the artist's game.
Now the baby boomers, i.e., us, are getting older, and were suddenly discovering that there are great things about getting older. You have time for your friendships and you appreciate them in ways that you didn't before.
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