weekly quote #17: Neal Stephenson January 31, 2008
Posted by ocmpoma in : other , trackbackIt’s been one of those days. So, to ease my troubled mind (and ignoring the fact that I never even got a wq up last week…) here’s one of my favorite bits from one of my favorite novels, Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon*; it’s a fictional World War II interview between bedridden Marine Bobby Shaftoe and Ronald Reagan, interviewing him for the news serials, on page 109 of my edition:
“Ronald Reagan has a stack of three-by-five cards in his lap. He skids up a new one: ‘What advice do you, as the youngest American fighting man ever to win both the Navy Cross and the Silver Star, have for any young Marines on their way to Guadalcanal?’
Shaftoe doesn’t have to think very long. The memories are still as fresh as last night’s eleventh nightmare: ten plucky Nips in Suicide Charge!
‘Just kill the one with the sword first.’
‘Ah,’ Reagan says, raising his waxed and penciled eyebrows, and cocking his pompadour in Shaftoe’s direction. ‘Smarrrt–you target them because they’re the officers, right?’
‘No, fuckhead!’ Shaftoe yells, ‘You kill ‘em because they’ve got fucking swords! Have you ever had anyone running at you with a fucking sword?‘ “
* Hands-down one of the best novels I’ve ever read — cryptanalysis, war, espionage, data-havens…
Tags for this article: books , quotation , war
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