# Quote — Harry Turtledove, Settling Accounts: Return Engagement

> If you happened to end up in the wrong place at the wrong instant, you could be the best soldier in the world and it wouldn't matter one goddamn bit. Your next of kin would get a wire from the War Department, and that would be that.

- Author: [Harry Turtledove](https://www.leafyquotes.com/harry-turtledove.md)
- Book: [Settling Accounts: Return Engagement](https://www.leafyquotes.com/harry-turtledove/settling-accounts-return-engagement.md)
- Page: 50
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Harry_Turtledove#Settling_Accounts:_Return_Engagement_(2004)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/harry-turtledove/settling-accounts-return-engagement/if-you-happened

## More from this book

> That was either the most brilliant analysis she’d ever heard—or the most breathtakingly cynical one. For the life of her, she couldn't decide which. Maybe it was both at once. Was that better or worse? She couldn't make up her mind there, either.

p. 397 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/harry-turtledove/settling-accounts-return-engagement/that-was-either.md)

> Hardly anything is more pleasant than talking about why other people are a pack of damn fools.

p. 442 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/harry-turtledove/settling-accounts-return-engagement/hardly-anything-is-more.md)

> Never can tell with this, though. That there man taught the Mississippi to be twisty.

p. 337 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/harry-turtledove/settling-accounts-return-engagement/never-can-tell.md)