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2a1afac
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Before you leave here, Sir, you're going to learn that one of the most brutal things in the world is your average nineteen-year-old American boy.
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war
brutal
brutality
teenage
teenagers
cruel
boys
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Philip Caputo |
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ab24e78
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Directly overhead the Milky Way was as distinct as a highway across the sky. The constellations shown brilliantly, except the north, where they were blurred by the white sheets of the Aurora. Now shimmering like translucent curtains drawn over the windows of heaven, the northern lights suddenly streaked across a million miles of space to burst in silent explosions. Fountains of light, pale greens, reds, and yellows, showered the stars and g..
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nature
sacred
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Philip Caputo |
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5807324
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The essence of the Marine Corps experience, I decided, was pain.
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pain
war
marines
military
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Philip Caputo |
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5ad6cf5
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Belief is a virus, and once it gets into you, its first order of business is to preserve itself, and the way it preserves itself is to keep you from having any doubts, and the way it keeps you from doubting is to blind you to the way things really are. Evidence contrary to the belief can be staring you straight in the face, and you won't see it... True believers just don't see things the way they are, because if they did, they wouldn't be t..
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Philip Caputo |
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1066540
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And men who do not expect to receive mercy eventually lose their inclination to grant it.
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Philip Caputo |
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cc02598
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As a rule he had found it useful as well as prudent to trust his fellow man to do the right thing only when the wrong thing failed to present itself.
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Philip Caputo |
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615a943
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I saw their living mouths moving in conversation and their dead mouths grinning the taut-drawn grins of corpses. Their living eyes I saw, and their dead eyes still-staring. Had it not been for the fear that I was going crazy, I would have found it an interesting experience, a trip such as no drug could possibly produce. Asleep and dreaming, I saw dead men living; awake, I saw living men dead.
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Philip Caputo |
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8fd3daa
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The beaver dam had been constructed on the ruins of a man-made one, built by the CCC back in the thirties and later dynamited by an irate Finn who'd objected to the government's meddling with nature.
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Philip Caputo |
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2b38643
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the first Airstream to roll off the assembly line, in 1936, was called the Clipper and was modeled on a design created by Hawley Bowlus, designer of Lindbergh's Spirit of St. Louis. An
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Philip Caputo |
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bf9727e
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The plotting he'd had to do to come to this point had exhausted Kidman's capacity for calculation; his natural, impulsive violence was regaining the upper hand.
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Philip Caputo |
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7529d34
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that the greatest happiness lies in living for others. The self and its appetites, the satisfaction of which only yields deeper hungers, are to the soul as mooring cables to an airship. To cut them willingly and without regret is to know true emancipation, the kind that cannot be granted by constitutions, proclamations, manifestos. Yes,
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Philip Caputo |
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4ef5f7c
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What finger-shaped Florida lacks in breadth it makes up for in length; Tallahassee is 480 miles from Miami (farther than New York City is from Cleveland). The
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Philip Caputo |
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0648bf1
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I had only one hard-and-fast rule: avoid interstates. They are predictable and boring, and their uniformity somehow erases changes in landscape; you can drive six hundred miles, from forests into desert, and feel that you haven't gone anywhere. In a sense, you haven't. You have no idea about the lives of the people in the towns and cities you've bypassed at seventy miles an hour. *
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Philip Caputo |
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afac62e
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Key West has become an imitation of its former self, its eccentricities commoditized for sale to tourists. That "character" you see with a parrot on his shoulder is about as authentic as vinyl siding, employed to provide local color. Gargantuan cruise ships dock two or three times a week, disgorging passengers by the thousands to troll the cheesy T-shirt shops on the main drag, Duval Street. And with all sorts of diversions to keep visitors..
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Philip Caputo |
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d40e53f
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Aside from their companionship, I'd brought Sage and Sky as ambassadors, hoping they would attract attention and open the door to conversations with strangers. In a moment, they fulfilled their diplomatic function.
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Philip Caputo |
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2b9e06b
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I really believe that when we start talking ourselves back, we'll have more to offer the world." he [Woodenkinfe] said. "I don't want a gray world." "You mean taking back our cultures and where we come from." "Absolutely! You want to talk about the fabric of this country, that's it." "So rather than a melting pot, it would be a..." "A blanket of color, all sewn in the shape of the U.S."
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Philip Caputo |
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0ce45db
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Someone had told me, years ago, that Key West's latitude was the northernmost from which the Southern Cross was visible. I had glimpsed it just once, in 1980, while on a night swordfishing trip in the Gulf Stream. It hung a hand's width above the horizon in the southwest--four stars like the points of a crystal kite. On
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Philip Caputo |
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b2c5c96
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Key West has become an imitation of its former self,
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Philip Caputo |
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50ab305
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Dog Soldier Raid at New Scandinavia--1869,
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Philip Caputo |
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d26c0c2
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Fitzhugh wasn't immune to the desire that's in most people to spray graffiti on the cold rock of the world and say "I was here and what I did counted for something."
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Philip Caputo |
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6042626
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The total distance--11,741 miles--gave me sticker shock. Round it up to twelve thousand. Almost halfway around the world! It seemed slightly mad, but then it might do me good. To make such an epic road trip, discovering places I'd never been, rediscovering others, never knowing what I'd find beyond the next curve or hill, would be to recapture the enchantment of youth, a sense of promise and possibility. The cicada chirped incessantly in my..
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Philip Caputo |
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c249563
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I don't care if your the President of the United States, the Queen of England, the inventor of the microchip, a bankable movie star, or an ordinary Joe or Jill, you're no paragon in my book, but the same as a zebra or gazelle - a source of protein. In fact, I'd rather hunt you, because you're slow and feeble.
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man
nature
man-eater
to-the-point
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Philip Caputo |
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cbbe2ad
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with the great love of the unknown and vast dreams of dominion and power,
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Philip Caputo |
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3a6b125
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We had survived, but in war, a man does not have to be killed or wounded to become a casualty. His life, his sight, or limbs are not the only things he stands to lose.
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Philip Caputo |
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1644413
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uniforms
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Philip Caputo |