"All that peace, man, it felt so good it hurt. I want to hurt it back."

"테드 라벤더는 또 어미 잃은 강아지 한 마리를 받아 들였다. 라벤더는 강아지에게 플라스틱 수저로 밥을 먹이고 그의 배낭에 넣어 가지고 다녔다. 아자르가 강아지를 크레모아 대인지뢰에 묶어 폭파 장치를 터뜨리게 만들었던 그날까지."

"In June of 1968, a month after graduating from Macalester College, I was drafted to fight a war I hated. I was twenty-one years old. Young, yes, and politically naive, but even so the American war in Vietnam seemed to me wrong. Certain blood was being shed for uncertain reasons. I saw no unity of purpose, no consensus on matters of philosophy or history or law. The very facts were shrouded in uncertainty: Was it a civil war? A war of national liberation or simple aggression? Who started it, and when, and why? What really happened to the USS Maddox on that dark night in the Gulf of Tonkin? Was Ho Chi Minh a Communist stooge, or a nationalist savior, or both, or neither? What about the Geneva Accords? What about SEATO and the Cold War? What about dominoes? America was divided on these and a thousand other issues, and the debate had spilled out across the floor of the United States Senate and into the streets, and smart men in pinstripes could not agree on even the most fundamental matters of public policy. The only certainty that summer was moral confusion. It was my view then, and still is, that you don't make war without knowing why. Knowledge, of course, is always imperfect, but it seemed to me that when a nation goes to war it must have reasonable confidence in the justice and imperative of its cause. You can't fix your mistakes. Once people are dead, you can't make them undead."

"글쎄, 이것이 베트남일까. 이봐, 악마의 정원을 지나 모든 죄악은 정말 새롭고도 근원적인 것 같아."

"그들은 화가 난 것이 아니란다. 정확히 말하면 어떤 사람들은 이것을 원했고 또 다른 사람은 저것을 원했을 뿐이란다."
"그럼 아빠가 원했던 것은 뭔데?"
"아무것도 없었단다. 오직 살아 남는 것뿐이었다."

"진짜가 뭔데? 이런 환상적인 땅에서 여덟 달을 보냈어. 그 경계가 모호해져. 하느님께 솔직하게 말한다면, 나는 때때로 진짜가 무엇인지 구분할 수가 없어."


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