Shell-Shocked Veteran/Quotes

"The war gave them definition, direction, purpose. Without it, they don't know how to fit in anymore. So they keep looking for ways to go out in a blaze of glory. Some people call that being a hero. Maybe so. I don't know. I've never been one. Me? I think they're looking for something worth dying for because it's easier than finding something worth living for."

—Garibaldi, Babylon 5 -- "Infection"

"Once you've been to Serenity, you never leave. You just learn to live there."

—Zoe Washburne,Firefly

"There's no place I can be/Since I found Serenity..."

—The Ballad of Serenity,Firefly

"The winter after the curse was lifted, hundreds of veteran orcs like me were lost to despair. Our minds were finally free, yes... Free to relive all of the unthinkable acts that we had performed under the Legion's influence. I think it was the sounds of the draenei children that unnerved most of them... You never forget... Have you ever been to Jaggedswine Farm? When the swine are of age for the slaughter... It's that sound. The sound of the swine being killed... It resonates the loudest. Those are hard times for us older veterans."

—Varok Saurfang, World of Warcraft

"—These are men whose minds the Dead have ravished.
Memory fingers in their hair of murders,
Multitudinous murders they once witnessed.
Wading sloughs of flesh these helpless wander,
Treading blood from lungs that had loved laughter.
Always they must see these things and hear them,
Batter of guns and shatter of flying muscles,
Carnage incomparable and human squander
Rucked too thick for these men's extrication."

—Wilfred Owen, Mental Cases

The Chief: "Is it possible you've been living out a war flashback?"
Sarge: "Aye."
The Chief: "I'm gonna go ahead and say that's what happened."
Sarge: "It would explain a lot, sir."

—Agents of Cracked

And so I sit here at this bar
I'm not a hero, I'm not a movie star
I've got my beer, I've got my stories to tell
But they won't tell you what it's like in hell
Red flowers bursting down below us
Those people didn't even know us
We didn't know if we would live or die,
We didn't know if it was wrong or right
We didn't know if we would live or die,
I bombed Korea every night

—CAKE, I Bombed Korea

We are not youth any longer. We don't want to take the world by storm. We are fleeing. We fly from ourselves. From our life. We were eighteen and had begun to love life and the world; and we had to shoot it to pieces. The first bomb, the first explosion, burst in our hearts. We are cut off from activity, from striving, from progress. We believe in such things no longer, we believe in the war.

—Paul Bäumer, All Quiet on the Western Front

There's only so much fight in a person, only so much death you can take.

—Commander Shepard, Mass Effect 3

If Japan needs me, if Communist forces press to closely against our nation,I will fly again. But I pray all the more fervently that it is not for this reason that I return to the skies.

—Saburo Sakai, Samurai