NORMAN MAILER’S REGRETS The great novelist and nonfiction writer Norman Mailer ( The Naked and the Dead, The Executioner’s Song, many more) was asked toward the end of his life if he had any regrets. The interviewer expected, I imagine, an answer like, “I wish I’d spent more time with my children or more hours appreciating sunsets.” Instead, Mailer said, “I have three or four more books in my head; I wish I had written them.” Black Irish JAB #5, “Learning to Say No” As writers and artists, you and I live in a different universe from most people. Our interior planets revolve around a singular sun, and that sun is our work. That work takes precedence over everything except kids’soccer games and straight-up emergencies.

The misfortunes of war and preparations for war bear little relation to the reasons given to explain war: the real reasons are usually so insignificant that they are not even worth discussion, and they are completely unknown to those who die.

The madness of contemporary war is justified by dynastic interest, common nationalism, European equilibrium, or ambitions.

If there are ambitions in people, this is a very strange way to sustain it, with all the crimes which happen to people during war: destruction of homes, plunder, and mass murder.

—ANATOLE FRANCE

You ask me, is it necessary for civilized people to make war?

And I tell you not only is it “already” unnecessary, but it was never necessary, and not sometimes but always it destroys the normal development of humanity, destroys justice, and stops progress.

—GALSTON MOHK

Only during a period of war does it become obvious how millions of people can be manipulated.

People, millions of people, are filled with pride while doing things which those same people actually consider stupid, evil, dangerous, painful, and criminal, and they strongly criticize these things—but continue doing them.

The reasons which governments give for wars are always screens, behind which lie completely different reasons and motives.