Harry Turtledove

Scipio would sooner have gone on without the revolution than the other way around.

They’d kill him or he’d kill them. War reduced everything to a brutal simplicity.

Potter studied him. “I never have figured out how smart you are, Featherston, but you’ve made it plain you’re shrewd enough and to spare. If you hadn’t made the fatal mistake of being right at the wrong time, we might have the same rank by now.”

The bullet doesn’t care who shot it, only where it’s going.

“I must conclude that my views on the subject are also the views of the large majority of the American people.”

That was probably true. Because of it, Flora did not have a good opinion of the political wisdom of the large majority of the American people. Nationalism kept too many from voting their class interests.

It was like dying and going to hell, except a little hotter and a little stickier. July in Tennessee was not the ideal weather in which to fight in a barrel.

Moss sighed and nodded. Might-have-beens was a stupid game, when you got right down to it. Look back on things, and you couldn’t help but see they’d come out the way they had to come out.

Lieutenant Crowder reported that submersible as probably destroyed, and if you don’t think Lieutenant Crowder knows everything in the world, well, shit, just ask him.

Don’t do anything to make things worse was the eleventh commandment of the ghetto, at least as important as the original ten.

The only people who love a war are those who have never fought in one.

Down near the Florida border, Georgia could give South Carolina lessons in heat and humidity.

“Maybe we’ll get some use out of battleships in the next war after all.” He didn’t doubt there would be a next war; there would always be a next war.