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“Sometimes a soldier returns home and all he can do is share his story in the hopes that somehow, in some way, it helps another soldier make sense of things. And although the stories may not be perfect, sometimes just sharing is enough to make a difference.”
― Michael Anthony, Civilianized: A Young Veteran's Memoir

“I didn't tell him that I'd put his awful stories in boxes and stacked them on a shelf at the back of my mind. I could hear a quieter version of them still, from their dark place, through all the other business that occupied my brain, but I wouldn't unlid those boxes until I was ready to hear [his] stories again as they wanted to be heard.”
― Lauren Wolk, Wolf Hollow

“These days so many claim the title artist. To me, a creative soul is an artist no matter the profession. With me? When it comes to creativity there's no show. I love art, I love literature, poetry, paintings. There's no show there. I passionately, devotedly, wholly and completely LOVE being creative.”
― Nicole D'SettÄ“mi, Addictarium

“I could never understand why people cower from the word storm. Sounds like a good time, to me!”
― Nicole D'SettÄ“mi, Addictarium

“Why would anybody want a jagged piece to fit into the puzzle we call existance? A jagged piece, broken as it may be, will always stand out. There is no place for the broken pieces.”
― Nicole D'SettÄ“mi

“A very important man used to visit her sometimes, and I met him too. He loved children and used to dandle me on his knee. This was how the title came about for this book, Uncle Hitler, although in the old German tradition, I called him Uncle Adolf, even though I was not related to him. This was a sign of respect to an older person, which is why I called Frau Eva ‘Aunty Evaâ€�.”
― Alfred Nestor

“Never say war insane at the moment for you to embrace those gentle heroes you left behind.”
― Oscar Auliq-Ice

“Even if this spring the dappled leaves should shelter our minds from the moon's pale echo we would still remember how once they were sheltered by our skulls only from the day's sun and the night's stars and never from what we feared and what we remembered”
― Dan Davin

“I'm definitely a contradiction. I have a girlish figure, women's sensuality, and a man's energy.
Often, this confuses people. I don't do well in making sense out of my personality for others.”
― Nicole D'Settemi

“My entire life I watched people allow the world to shape them, to dictate their choices, to mold them into the clay globe that is earth. To be part of, to fit in. I watched their interior and exterior layers be thinned out by society. But me? I'm like an open wound, instead. I'm the thing you can't bandage. I'm that ugly scar that isn't going away. I'm a reminder of pain, of truth, of brutality. Nobody likes brutality. Nobody likes harsh truths. And, you know what? I'm fucking okay with that.”
― Nicole D'SettÄ“mi

“There were days when the saturation of death, and the realities of life, became too great. Days where I felt suffocated, heavy. I’d try to gasp for a breath, and I’d fail. Yet, just in the nick of time, I would somehow, once again, be resuscitated. The world grew dark, cold. A black cloud looming over everything that I saw. People evolved into monsters–caricatures, and EVERYTHING was frightening, everybody was a predator!
The world transformed, and I would choke. Plumes of dust representing reality, as they sought an exit from my mouth, as I wheezed, and I gasped. Reality was choking me, saturating me with its heaviness.
Control? None whatsoever. Not over things, not over people. No, that was Life’s illusion; control was the magic trick. The lack of control, I was truly speaking of, was the inevitable–death. The one thing that tied into everything, everyone. Every neurotic thought, every impulse.
It was Death. The Random Act.”
― Nicole D'SettÄ“mi, Addictarium

“Mohammed started telling me about some of the most horrific stories he encountered in Mosul during the ISIL years, including when he worked at a local NGO as a caseworker. ‘How can you not be traumatized and suffer sleepless nights when dealing with a story of a 13-year old boy who was escaping for safety with his parents and sister from the right to the left side of Mosul, while it was being liberated by the Iraqi army?â€� Mohammed paused, lit a cigarette, rolled down the car window, and continued, ‘as they were running, the father wanted to make sure the road was clear, so as soon as he ventured out, he got a bullet in his head from a sniper. The mother ran to him crying and screaming. She, too, got a bullet in her head. As the little boy and his sister tried to escape, the girl was shot, but she didn’t die. After hiding in a nearby building for a while, they came out and took their parentsâ€� bodies to bury them in that same empty building they took as a shelter. Once done, as they were leaving, the little girl got yet another bullet and died this time. The 13-year old boy survived, but did he really survive? Can even a person who hears this story survive it?”
― Louis Yako

“Our passing interrupted the road crossing, and the crowd bunched on both sides waited for us to go by as we all waited for the war to go by, thinking we can suspend or postpone living and not knowing that in war the heart grows older than it does in dreams”
― Dan Davin, Breathing spaces

“In the Addictarium I learned one thing; life is about who we think we are, lessons are learned when we stop thinking negatively about ourselves. I learned that at the bottom of all addictions was the need to be loved, the bottom of all misery, the bottom of disaster. All of it led to love. Not being loved. Wanting love. Loving and not having it return. That's what every moment in history boiled down to. Acceptance...understanding--not feeling it, and therefore not feeling loved.”
― Nicole D'SettÄ“mi

“I don't want everybody to understand me, to get me. How boring would that be? But, I do want those special few to absolutely understand who I am.”
― Nicole D'Settemi

“The issue is when you mess with someone who is crazy, you might as well cancel the ride. Because there is no where left to drive someone like that.”
― Nicole D'SettÄ“mi

“I used to worry about being understood. I had the perspective that every one's take on me actually mattered.
I was so wrapped up in mourning life, how ironic it can be. How awful. Now? I just want to do what makes me fucking happy, already.”
― Nicole D'SettÄ“mi

“When men perform egocentric activities, we tag it and brush it off like "oh he's a guy, they have egos." as if to say women don't. Well, guess what? One should HOPE we have egos too. After All, without an ego the only thing left is the ID. Primary ANIMAL instincts. You know what we call people with only an ID? Psychopaths.”
― Nicole D'SettÄ“mi

“I want to be tied down. I want fury. I want someone's pain. Figuratively, but maybe more than that. My fiance knew that. And, he delivered.”
― Nicole D'SettÄ“mi

“I can't recall ever wanting a normal life. I never really wanted marriage and kids, the whole barefoot in the kitchen thing. I LOVE children, and I LOVE the idea of celebrating love. I've been in engaged multiple times. But, even when I said yes, I knew it was just to agree to and seal myself to that person with a higher commitment. I've never gotten that wedding bug, where I just want to pour a years worth of energy into throwing this epic party because I did the thing every body does. What's the big deal? I just don't comprehend it.”
― Nicole D'SettÄ“mi

“I love children so much that I decided not to have them. I loved my nephews so fiercely, and the heartache I endured form that alone was torture. So, when I thought about my own kids, I knew that my neuroticism would be incredibly unhealthy for them. I Decided not to have them, because I understand the commitment, and I love them to too much already--in my brain--to let them down like that. To disappoint them with life.”
― Nicole D'SettÄ“mi

“Because life–to be alive, existence—was power in itself, and death (not sodomy) was the ultimate submissive act. Everything else was just revolving around life and death. That was why people became obsessed with power, control, let fear drive them. Fear of the unknown, and ultimately of death, were the things that life revolved around. It was sort of ironic, life revolving around death, and vice versa. Like, with everything else, with one came the inevitable blossoming of its opposite.”
― Nicole D'SettÄ“mi, Addictarium

“Stockholm Syndrome. […] It was a sort of desperate blind love. And loyalty. Loyalty and love geared towards the abuser. It’s a response to fear, an admission within of defeat, I’d read. But I thought it to be more than that. It was the thrill of having something to submit to, become utterly powerless to. A sinister sort of seduction. You knew in your heart it would end badly, yet you just couldn’t stop yourself from giving [B.K1] in to that primal urge, the way prey finally accepts its fate, take me, it says, as the [B.K2] predator sinks its teeth in.”
― Nicole D'SettÄ“mi, Addictarium

“Part of me hated technology, because to me technology was a mother fucker that was eating this world alive. It was all part of the machine, the deadening of the human spirit, and I wouldn’t allow it. I had to see the world for what it was, drain it of all its illusion, because what lingered beneath? The wild, untamed beast, and in the end it would eat us all. That was something nobody could stop, not with any amount of money, or material things. Nothing that was part of physical reality could prevent death. So, to me, people were absurd, robotic, already dead. Buying fancy cars, big homes, the latest electronics, and all for what? The excuse was convenience. I need this. It makes things easier. Yet, while comfort may have been at the surface, the real thirst for these things, for material possessions, was to feel in control, and to feel part of.”
― Nicole D'SettÄ“mi

“If there was a group of men, one of them sipped his chai and told his story, and when he got to a point where he couldn’t continue, the point in the story I most wanted to hear, someone else
took a sip of his chai and began his own story, and so on and so forth, until everyone was given a say and not a single story was actually finished.”
― JAMIL JAN KOCHAI, 99 Nights in Logar

“A long time ago, I learned to only share my war stories (I have many) with people with whom I feel a genuine and deep human connection. These stories are at once precious and painful â€� they need to be earned. They must be deserved by those who hear them.”
― Louis Yako

“If I don't see you in the future - I'll surly see you in the pasture.”
― Curt Rude, The Bee Killer: An all true story of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

“What are you scared of?”
― Melissa Fu, Peach Blossom Spring

“A hundred surviving paladins gathered in one line of gunners on our south wall: uniformed Texas Guard 3rd Brigade, blue leather vested TEXIANS, and volunteers in period clothes and hats. We watched the armored attack column that creaked its way forward toward us, a massive axis of evil.”
― Robert Workman, Immigration Invasion! A Family Affair

“Between his howls of torment, his rediscovered English told me a lot. An earth shattering storm was about to hit, but not this one with wind and water. Between bits and pieces and shocking details, he begged me to kill him. “Matame!â€� He shouted. “Matame! Por favor! Matame, senor!"

I waited. He talked. I could hardly believe what I heard. But it was definitely a deathbed confession. I knocked a smoke loose from its box, hunched over and fought off the wind and rain and lit it. “Nothing I can do for you, pal. You’re gonna die; and mercy killing is against the law.� I stripped the magazine out of his AK-47 and slipped it into one of my pockets.

“There’s one shot,â€� I said. I checked the chamber of the gun, tossed the rifle into the sand ten yards behind him. When I walked away, he was still talking, screaming actually. Sayanara, bitch.”
― Robert Workman, Immigration Invasion! A Family Affair