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"People talked to me in a way I think they would not have talked to somebody who hadn't shared the experience; they gave me their papers, they gave me their diaries. I found people constantly opening up to me. And I think they did because I had shared that experience with them."
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"It [discovering Finnish] was like discovering a wine-cellar filled with bottles of amazing wine of a kind and flavour never tasted before. It quite intoxicated me."
"She picked up the stout and took a sip. It slid down her throat like silk."
"Not everyone can experience what other people can... That's why movies come out... films and books... and short stories and novels..."
"Our experiences are the building blocks of the future hewn out of the granite of the present."
"Life wants you to touch, taste and see the grandeur of the world's unfathomable variety."
"There is a huge difference between learning about truth and experiencing truth. Touch the source."
"It is not how long the music last but how much we enjoy."
"When the reality looks extraordinarily unreal, you must know that you are in an extraordinarily beautiful place!"
"All day long, one continues to suffer sweet or bitter fruits. This life has been attained for the purpose of experiencing!"
Explore more quotes by Neil Sheehan
"World War II had been such a tremendous success story for this country that the political and military leadership began to assume that they would prevail simply because of who they were. We were like the British at the turn of the 19th century."
"Americans, particularly after World War II, tended to romanticize war because in World War II our cause was the cause of humanity, and our soldiers brought home glory and victory, and thank God that they did. But it led us to romanticize it to some extent."
"We thought that whatever we wanted to do was right and good, simply because we were Americans, and we would succeed at it because we were Americans."
"You remember all those phrases about how "these people" - Asians - don't value human life like we do. Well if you spend any time around them, you discover that they love their children just as much as we love ours. That is certainly true of the Vietnamese."
"Just because you put higher-octane gasoline in your car doesn't mean you can break the speed limit. The speed limit's still 65."
"We wanted to see this country win the war just as much as those advisors did. We felt we would help to do that by reporting the truth. And so there was the moral outrage over this general and the ambassador in Saigon who kept denying the truth we would see."
"I think you have to remember that Americans saw their purpose as so innately good that they could excuse the pain they would inflict on others to carry out those purposes. Because the purposes were so good, they would justify this pain we were inflicting on other people."
"At least I'm at peace with myself. I have done my best to write a book about what really happened there and why it happened and it's done, it's published. I won't write another book on Vietnam."
"The destruction of civilian hamlets, the killing and the wounding of civilians, became vastly greater than it had been before, and it was very upsetting; but I still couldn't bring myself to understand that the policy itself was wrong."
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