Flag/Quote

A collection of quotes about the Marine Corps soldier and Arcadian Rebel **Clark Flat**, also known as **Flag**.

## Spoken by Flag

*"The world doesn't need a Superman... just a brave one."*
—Clark Flat
*"War is hell, but that's not the half of it, because war is also mystery and terror and adventure and courage and discovery and holiness and pity and despair and longing and love. War is nasty; war is fun. War is thrilling; war is drudgery. War makes you a man; war makes you dead."*
—Clark Flat, quoting The Things They Carried
*"It's not about who is right, it's about what is right"*
—Clark Flat
*"Don't apologize, just don't do it again."*
—Clark Flat
*"No matter what branch you join, you will sleep in the dirt. You will feel the cold in your bones, and you will wish you went to college instead."*
—Clark Flat
*"The best victories have no battle."*
—Clark Flat
*"Pain shapes you."*
—Clark Flat to Charlotte H. Nguyen
*"I sometimes have to remind myself that my gun is for self-defense only."*
—Clark Flat
*"You see Jason, I was brainwashed into not feeling any kind of emotion when I point a gun. No no, I was trained into thinking that the enemy has no life or worth. So keep in mind, when I point my gun at anything or anyone, I'm ready to kill them by all means necessary. I have no value for their life. Whoever's on the other end of my gun, I'm ready to kill without cause."*
—Clark Flat to Jason Kade
*"How would you defend without killing? You can't win a war without killing."*
—Clark Flat
*"One of my favorite parts about South America was soggy socks. I loved soggy socks."*
—Clark Flat
*"Anything is a weapon in war, even water. The reason I say even water is because water itself can knock out a full grown, built man, like you. So, anything can be used, even if you don't know how to use it."*
—Clark Flat to Jason Kade
*"A Marine's best friend is his rifle."*
—Clark Flat
*"Can't change the past. We can only learn from it."*
—Clark Flat
*"People who don't know shit about guns usually go for something shiny. You know, something with a with a fancy grip. There's always the asshole who gets the big hand cannon that kicks like a mule and they're too afraid to use it. But a .380 shows thought."*
—Clark Flat quoting The Punisher
## Spoken about Flag

*"So Clark is, for the most part, fearless. He is scared at times, but he never shows it and he never lets it control him."*
—Clark
*"The kid was built like a tank when he was born."*
—Dallas Feld
*"Soldiers push through."*
—Almanac
*"Old soldiers never die, and they don't fade away."*
—Almanac
*"Old soldiers are hard to kill."*
—Almanac
*"Sometimes, death can just spring up on a man, like when he's bothering a Marine."*
—Almanac
## Dialogue

### With Almanac

*"Aggression is something we can control. It's a little hard to control at times but it's something we have power over. We can't control when we get mad or ticked off, but we can control how we react to those emotions. We control how we treat others when we're in this state of anger. Sadly, I struggle a lot on my bad days and normally start fights with people. I wish I could say I'm working on it but I'm really not. It's just so easy to let your anger out on someone and ruin their day too. I'm not sure how you do with it but you seem to handle it better than I do, but it might be because you're young."
"Wouldn't that be the opposite?"
"No, because when you're young, you think you're mad, and you are, but you're mad at rather stupid reasons. As you get older you see behind the walls and doors of the world. You realize that there's a lot of friction behind the gears of what makes the world go round."
"How many must I go through?"
"You don't want to in most cases. Since you're not the hothead type, you can go through. You go through by connections to people, your connections to others. This will help in the short run but I don't think it will stick. You're going to relearn this through experience."*
—Clark Flat and Jason Kade
### With Eden Francis Gates

> *"Mindfullness: living in the present or else I feel like I'm not real. So, grounding - its feeling the sheets your on, or walking barefoot, or counting the colors in the room. Its making sure you know that you're awake and alive - simulation."*
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> *"Does it work?"*
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> *"Yes, it works a lot, I tap my thumb on each finger at a time ... and that is the practice of a lot of things, including mindfulness, in involves something called the wide mind. Its like a bubble map: the circles, the emotional mind, the reasonable mind overlap and make another oval, which is the wide mind."*
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> *"How does it work?"*
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> *"Say, you take an emotion, like you're really sad because your dog died. Then you take a reasonable assumption like your dog is in a better place, you form them together to create the wide mind. Its sort of like a realization, you dog is dead, he's in a better place. Now what do you do with this information? you can calculate that you are alive and your dog isn't, but you will remember him. . ."*
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> *". . . Its a lot but I need to find some coping method because ignoring things doesn't help"*
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> *"No, ignoring things doesn't help, You know the term fake it until you make it?"*
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> *"Yeah, that's how I describe it"*
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> *"Well, when you're upset, instead of going into your negative thoughts, force yourself to smile and say to yourself - I will get through this"*
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> *"Why?"*
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> *"I find that when I smile, it feels like I'm getting through it. Now you don't have to do this in front of people because you don't wanna fake it for others, just yourself. Even sometimes, I say silly phrases whenever I'm upset like "I'm a boss" or some other shit, because it might make you laugh and then it kind of flows you out of your bad mood. You can find a coping skill that fits for you, Clark. Just remember, coping skills are usually a bit uncomfortable at first."*
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> -Eden to Clark
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