Minefield Quotes
Work creates an enormous sense of self and I saw that in my mother. She was an enormous, towering figure to me in the best possible way. I picked up a lot of things from her in the way that I work... I also picked up a lot of the failings of when your father doesn't have those things and that results in a house that turns into a minefield.
Bruce Springsteen
Literature was a vast minefield occupied by enemies, except for a few classic authors (just a few), and every day I had to walk through that minefield, where any false move could be fatal, with only the poems of Archilochus to guide me. It's like that for all young writers. There comes a time when you have no support, not even from friends, forget about mentors, and there's no one to give you a hand; publication, prizes, and grants are reserved for the others, the ones who said "Yes, sir,” over and over, or those who praised the literary mandarins, a never-ending horde distinguished only by their aptitude for discipline and punishment - nothing escapes them and they forgive nothing.
Roberto Bolaño
Three black soldiers stopped me in the hallway. "Colonel, we saw what you did for the brother out there," one said. "We'll never forget that, and we'll make sure that all the other brothers in the battalion know what you did." I was stunned. It hadn't registered on me until that moment that the kid in the minefield was black.
Norman Schwarzkopf, Jr.