History Quotes / StrangerInAFamiliarLand

->''"How do you pick up the threads of an old life? How do you go on when in your heart, you begin to understand... there ''is'' no going back? There are [[BreakTheCutie some things]] that time cannot mend... some hurts that go too deep... that have taken hold."''

'''[=PoH=]:''' That's because there's nothing left for us in the real world! What can we do?! Live our peaceful lives and bag groceries for a living?! No, the only time we were able to feel alive was in [[LightNovel/SwordArtOnline SAO]]!

-->-- '''Phoebus''', ''WesternAnimation/TheHunchbackOfNotreDame''

->''It was very happy, but it was strange. They looked the same to me, of course, but now and then I realised that they were recognising the boy of eighteen whom they remembered, in this much bigger, sunburned young man of twenty-one. That's an odd feeling. So is standing alone in the quiet of your room, just as you remember it but a little smaller, staring at each familiar thing of childhood and thinking: that day of the Sittang ambush ... that terrible slow-motion moment at Kinde Wood when the section went down around you in the cross-fire ... that night when the Japs came up the Yindaw road, the little ungainly figures in the light of the burning trucks, passing by only a few yards away ... that hectic slashing melee at the bunkers under the little gold pagoda where L___ bought his lot and J___ had his hat shot off and the ground was dark and wet with blood -- while all ''that'' was happening, a world and a lifetime away, ''this'' was here: the quiet room, just as it had always been, just as it is now. The porcupine-quill inkstand that the old man brought home from East Africa, the copy of ''Just William'' with its torn spine, the bail you broke with your fast ball against Transitus (it must have been cheap wood), the ink-stain low down on the wallpaper that you made (quite deliberately) when you were eight ... Nothing changed, except you. Never call yourself unlucky again.''\\
\\
''I couldn't sleep in bed that night. I did something I hadn't done since Burma, except on a few night exercises: I went out into the garden with a blanket and rolled up under a bush. God knows why. It wasn't affectation -- I took good care that no one knew -- nor was it sheer necessity, nor mere silliness in the exuberance of homecoming. At the time I felt it was a sort of gesture of thanksgiving, and only much later did I realise it was probably a reluctance to "come home" to a life that I knew there could be no return to, now. Anyway, I didn't sleep a bloody wink.''

->''I've finally found what I was looking for.''\\
''[[BloodKnight A place where I can be without remorse]].''\\
''Because I am a stranger who has found an even stranger war.''\\
''I've finally found what I was looking for.''\\
\\
''Here I come!''\\
\\
''I sharpen the knife,''\\
''and look down upon the pain.''\\
''For all my life,''\\
''A stranger I remain.''
-->-- '''VideoGame/MetalGearRisingRevengeance OST''', "A Stranger I Remain" (Mistral's theme)

->''Once you've been on the battlefield, tasted the exhilaration, the tension...\\
it all becomes part of you. Once you've awakened the warrior within... it never sleeps again.''
-->-- '''Big Boss''', ''"VideoGame/MetalGear2SolidSnake"''

->''Home? [[YouCantGoHomeAgain We can't go home.]] There's a line men like us have to cross. If we're lucky, we do what's necessary, and then we die. No. [[DeathSeeker All I really want, Captain, is peace.]]''
-->--'''Col. John Konrad''', to '''Cpt. Martin Walker''', ''VideoGame/SpecOpsTheLine''

->''How do you pick up the threads of an old life? How do you go on when in your heart, you begin to understand... there ''is'' no going back? There are [[BreakTheCutie some things]] that time cannot mend... some hurts that go too deep... that have taken hold.''

->'''ComicBook/LanaLang:''' So what's it like over there?\\

->'''Kirito''': I stopped living in the past a long time ago. That's something you and the rest of Laughing Coffin haven't been able to do.\\
'''[=PoH=]''': That's because there's nothing left for us in the real world! What can we do?! Live our peaceful lives and bag groceries for a living?! No, the only time we were able to feel alive was in [[LightNovel/SwordArtOnline SAO]]!

->[[ComicBook/GreenArrow Oliver]] lost ten years of his life. When he came back home, he saw that his seven-year old baby sister was almost an adult, that his irresponsible best friend was now an executive at his father’s company, and that his other closest friend had already moved on with her adult life, with a job and everything.

->''I've lived in this neighborhood my entire life. I'm not going to pick up stakes and move just because some drugged-out little wiseguys hanging around the front door''
-->-- Captain America, ''ComicBook/TheUltimates''

->'''Zelda''': "I don't know anything about ruling. I know how to move without making a sound, how to kill without leaving the shadows, and how to live in the wilderness. Now that I'm supposed to be royalty again, I can scarcely remember how. I can scarcely remember ''her''. I'm sorry. I'm being selfish again."
->'''Ruto''': "No, you're being silly. You've always been ''you.''"
->'''Zelda''': "Have I? Being Sheik became familiar, but never right. Does that make sense? Now I'm right but unfamiliar."

-> '''Oscar:''' "'She brushed off her bumps and bruises, for nothing hurt worth than the loneliness in her chest.'"
-> '''[[TheMentor Ozpin]]:''' "I recognize that. 'The Girl Who Fell Through The World'?"
-> '''Oscar:''' "I shouldn't be surprised you're so familiar with fairy tales."
-> '''Ozpin:''' "[[Really700YearsOld I've lived through my share of them]]. How are you holding up?"
-> '''Oscar:''' "I thought the idea of falling through Remnant into a new world was... exciting. I never understood why she was so sad when she finally made it back home. But now it makes more sense."
-> '''Ozpin:''' "She wasn't the same girl anymore."
-->-- ''WebAnimation/{{RWBY}}'', "Volume 8, Chapter 9: Witch"

-> '''[[TheMentor Ozpin]]:''' "I recognize that. "The Girl Who Fell Through The World"?

->'''Ruto''': "No, you're being silly. You've always been '''you.''"

-->-- '''Frodo Baggins''', ''[[Film/TheLordOfTheRings The Return of the King]]''

-->-- '''Big Boss''', ''"MetalGear2SolidSnake"''

-->-- '''Frodo Baggins''', ''[[Film/TheLordOfTheRings The Return of the King]]''

''Where I did not feel [[TheVietnamWar that war]]''\\

-->--'''Col. John Konrad''', to '''Cpt. Martin Walker''', ''VideoGame/SpecOpsTheLine''

-->-- '''Lapis Lazuli''', ''WesternAnimation/StevenUniverse''

-->-- '''Big Boss''', ''"MetalGear2SolidSnake"''

->-- '''Charlie Daniels Band''', "Still in Saigon"

->-- '''Ed Miller''', "At Home With the Exiles"

->''It was very happy, but it was strange. They looked the same to me, of course, but now and then I realised that they were recognising the boy of eighteen whom they remembered, in this much bigger, sunburned young man of twenty-one. That's an odd feeling. So is standing alone in the quiet of your room, just as you remember it but a little smaller, staring at each familiar thing of childhood and thinking: that day of the Sittang ambush ... that terrible slow-motion moment at Kinde Wood when the section went down around you in the cross-fire ... that night when the Japs came up the Yindaw road, the little ungainly figures in the light of the burning trucks, passing by only a few yards away ... that hectic slashing melee at the bunkers under the little gold pagoda where L___ bought his lot and J___ had his hat shot off and the ground was dark and wet with blood -- while all ''that'' was happening, a world and a lifetime away, ''this'' was here: the quiet room, just as it had always been, just as it is now. The porcupine-quill inkstand that the old man brought home from East Africa, the copy of ''Just William'' with its torn spine, the bail you broke with your fast ball against Transitus (it must have been cheap wood), the ink-stain low down on the wallpaper that you made (quite deliberately) when you were eight ... Nothing changed, except you. Never call yourself unlucky again.''

->''I couldn't sleep in bed that night. I did something I hadn't done since Burma, except on a few night exercises: I went out into the garden with a blanket and rolled up under a bush. God knows why. It wasn't affectation -- I took good care that no one knew -- nor was it sheer necessity, nor mere silliness in the exuberance of homecoming. At the time I felt it was a sort of gesture of thanksgiving, and only much later did I realise it was probably a reluctance to "come home" to a life that I knew there could be no return to, now. Anyway, I didn't sleep a bloody wink.''
->-- '''Creator/GeorgeMacDonaldFraser''', ''Literature/McAuslan''

->''I've finally found what I was looking for.''\\
''[[BloodKnight A place where I can be without remorse]].''\\
''Because I am a stranger who has found an even stranger war.''\\
''I've finally found what I was looking for.''\\

->-- '''VideoGame/MetalGearRisingRevengeance OST''', "A Stranger I Remain" (Mistral's theme)

->-- '''Big Boss''', ''"MetalGear2SolidSnake"''

->''We spake of many a vanished scene,''
->''Of what we once had thought and said,''
->''Of what had been, and might have been,''
->''And who was changed, and who was dead;''

->''And all that fills the hearts of friends,''
->''When first they feel, with secret pain,''
->''Their lives thenceforth have separate ends,''
->''And never can be one again;''
->-- '''Henry Wadsworth Longfellow''', ''The Fire of Drift-Wood''

->''Between two places, you still can be torn''
->''The place where you live, and the place where you were born''
->''For one you know, and one seems foreign''
->''When first you become an exile''

->''So many times now, I've been back''
->''To enjoy the music and the crack''
->''But each time, my bags I've repacked''
->''And gone on home to the exiles''

->''I've finally found what I was looking for.''
->''[[BloodKnight A place where I can be without remorse]].''
->''Because I am a stranger who has found an even stranger war.''
->''I've finally found what I was looking for.''

->''Here I come!''

->''I sharpen the knife,''
->''and look down upon the pain.''
->''For all my life,''
->''A stranger I remain.''

->''Once you've been on the battlefield, tasted the exhilaration, the tension...
->it all becomes part of you. Once you've awakened the warrior within... it never sleeps again.''

->-- '''VideoGame/MetalGearRisingRevengeance OST''', "A Stranger I Remain"

->--'''Henry Wadsworth Longfellow''', ''The Fire of Drift-Wood''

->-- '''GeorgeMacDonaldFraser''', McAuslan

->--- '''MetalGearRisingRevengeance OST''', "A Stranger I Remain"

->-- '''GeorgeMacDonaldFraser''', McAuslan

->-- '''Charlie Daniels Band''', "Still in Saigon"