James Carroll Quotes

• The very act of story-telling, of arranging memory and invention according to the structure of the narrative, is by definition holy. We tell stories because we can't help it. We tell stories because we love to entertain and hope to edify. We tell stories because they fill the silence death imposes. We tell stories because they save us.

  James Carroll

  Memories, Silence, Definitions

  9 Copy quote

• There are times when we stop, we sit still. We listen and breezes from a whole other world begin to whisper.

  James Carroll

  Other Worlds, Relaxation, Breeze

  9 Copy quote

• We spend most of our time and energy in a kind of horizontal thinking. We move along the surface of things....but, there are times when we must stop. We sit still. We lose ourselves in a pile of leaves or in its memory. We listen, and breezes from a whole other world begin to whisper.

  James Carroll

  Spiritual, Memories, Moving

  6 Copy quote

• Before entering the seminary, I had not encountered the life-changing potential of reading as a source of meaning, as a way of ordering one's inner life, and being rooted in the world.

  James Carroll

  Life Changing, Book, Reading

  4 Copy quote

• It takes a disciplined imagination to acknowledge that the less personal savageries of bombs, missiles, artillery and heavy weapons are, to those blown to smithereens, also barbaric. The main horror of what the coalition is doing is not a matter of the occasional soldier who, in the heat of battle, commits a war crime, but the steady destruction rained on cities, villages, the Iraqi people. This violence is wreaked calmly, from a distance, within the rules of engagement. The war itself is the American war crime.

  James Carroll

  War, Distance, Cities

  4 Copy quote

• There are so many flaws, .. I don't think they can be fixed.

  James Carroll

  Thinking, Flaws, Fixed

  4 Copy quote

• Telling our stories is what saves us. The story is enough... The very act of storytelling, of arranging memory and invention according to the structure of narrative is, by definition, holy.

  James Carroll

  Memories, Stories, Definitions

  James Carroll (1997). “An American Requiem: God, My Father, and the War That Came Between Us”, p.283, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  7 Copy quote

• Memory is a political act. Forgetfulness is the handmaiden of tyranny.

  James Carroll

  Memories, Political, Tyranny

  James Carroll (2013). “Crusade: Chronicles of an Unjust War”, p.13, Metropolitan Books

  4 Copy quote

• The whole story of human and personal progress is an unmitigated tale of denials today-denials of rest, denials or repose and comfort and ease and pleasure-that tomorrow may be richer.

  James Carroll

  Progress, Comfort, Stories

  6 Copy quote

• American fighters of the Pacific War were not heroes. The desperation of island combat included exchanged barbarities of which no one would willingly speak for a generation. On the American side, there were foul racism, vengeful refusals to take prisoners, a generalized brutality that extended to a savage air war.

  James Carroll

  War, Hero, Air

  4 Copy quote

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