“To sit alone or with a few friends, half-drunk under a full moon, you just understand how lucky you are; it’s a story you can’t tell. It’s a story you almost by definition, can’t share. I’ve learned in real time to look at those things and realize: I just had a really good moment.”

“Military occupations have always seemed irreversible, until in fact they are reversed, but it always takes the effort of the colonized to roll back what the colonizers have done. Occupations never ended voluntarily, or just because the more powerful nation wanted it, and have certainly never been the result of a one-sided negotiated settlement initiated and controlled by the dominant power.”