"Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk" Quotes
A soldier's heroic actions during the Iraq War are glorified during a high-profile halftime show, leading to introspective moments and the harsh realities of war.
fiction | 335 pages | Published in 2012
Quotes
War is bigger than my family, but my family is bigger than war.
They're there for a football game. Stuff like war you can't really get excited about. They'll give you a free yellow-ribbon magnet with every purchase.
No matter how hard he tries, he can never fully separate himself from that other guy who shot at people and got shot at, that other guy who is from now on somehow spouse to this real tall skinny blonde Texas cheerleader.
Well, in wartime it's a noble thing to want to help people. But in peacetime you're just sort of mental if you insist on giving money away to the poor.
You can't see the pig all at once. From his angle Billy can see a chest, some wallowing tits, and the hind legs.
Alive, brave, and dangerous was never what Billy expected his future self to be.
The war is the war and not the story. And this too will be true of Iraq, assuming as seems mandatory that we go to war there.
Make war an experience rather than a cause.
Billy and the others feel the same way, a spare life stripped bare by war, nothing left but squander or invest.
It's hard to get excited about what is happening in Iraq since by comparison our own lives seem petty and lame.
