Welcome back to Thursday Quotables! This weekly feature is the place to highlight a great quote, line, or passage discovered during your reading each week. Whether it’s something funny, startling, gut-wrenching, or just really beautifully written, Thursday Quotables is where my favorite lines of the week will be, and you’re invited to join in!
NEW! Thursday Quotables is now using a Linky tool! Be sure to add your link if you have a Thursday Quotables post to share.
The Hummingbird by Stephen P. Kiernan
(released September 8, 2015)
This powerful books looks at people wounded by life and wounded by war, as well as providing a portrait of the people who care for them. Here’s part of a harsh but emotional exchange between one war veteran and the wife of another:
Joel held his arms wide. “Oh beautiful for spacious skies. Another believer in the innocence of noncombatants.”
“Excuse me?”
“Oh yeah… You have no complicity in warfare at all. You are sweet and clean and would never hurt a flea.”
“What are you trying to — ”
“But us soldiers and sailors and airmen and Marines, we must be the Other, the stranger, the odd thing that people maybe thank or maybe hate, but either way we are something different and weird and scary and not at all like you good, nice civilized folk.”
I’m getting close to the end of The Hummingbird, and I’m finding the writing and the characters so incredibly moving. I’ll be sharing my thoughts next week when I participate in the blog tour for this book.
What lines made you laugh, cry, or gasp this week? Do tell!
If you’d like to participate in Thursday Quotables, it’s really simple:
- Write a Thursday Quotables post on your blog. Try to pick something from whatever you’re reading now. And please be sure to include a link back to Bookshelf Fantasies in your post (http://www.bookshelffantasies.com), if you’d be so kind!
- Click on the linky button (look for the cute froggie face) below to add your link.
- After you link up, I’d love it if you’d leave a comment about my quote for this week.
- Be sure to visit other linked blogs to view their Thursday Quotables, and have fun!
Bookshelf Fantasies 
That a touching passage. And so true. We often think to soldiers like ‘different’ from us, and often forget that if we can be safe home is because our souldiers fight around the world.
Hey, my quote is also from a book about WWII, though looked at in a fantasy way
http://theoldshelter.com/thursday-quotables-dragonfly/
It’s such an interesting book, and this chapter in particular showed some of the common experiences returning soldiers face, whether coming back from Vietnam or Iraq, and trying to figure out how to live in the civilian world again.
Nice quote 🙂 I think the speakers morals really show through in the passage x
Thanks! The books is really moving. I have about 30 pages left, and can’t wait to finish!
What a powerful passage! I’m going to look into that book. There are some incredible war-related novels out there.
The book is really lovely. I’ve read a few interesting books about soldiers in the past couple of years, and for some reason I’m always especially moved by the stories of what happens when they come home again and have to readjust.
What a powerful statement! There are some wonderful war-related books out there and I’ll definitely be having a look at this one now!
I like the description of soldiers and marines! It’s so true, they all seem so strange, “the Other”.
There are some really interesting moments in this book showing how outside the returning soldiers feel, despite the best intentions of their loved ones.
That is such a great statement! I don’t read war stories that often but this one looks really interesting! Great quote this week 🙂
http://lessrealitymorebooks.blogspot.ie/2015/09/thursday-quotables-9-unravel-me.html