The war is so fucking simple. It is the lunar part of us that dreams of wasted terrain. (Mao II)

He is saying terror is what we use to give our people their place in the world. What used to be achieved through work, we gain through terror. Terror makes the new future possible. All men one man. Men live in history as never before. He is saying we make and change history minute by minute. History is not the book or the human memory. We do history in the morning and change it after lunch.

-- Don DeLillo, Mao II (235)

He says, "Mao regarded armed struggle as the final and greatest action of human consciousness. It is the final drama and the final test. And if many thousands die in the struggle? Mao said death can be light as a feather or heavy as a mountain. You die for the people and the nation, your death is massive and intense. Die for the oppressors, die working for the exploiters and manipulators, die selfish and vain and you float away like a feather of the smallest bird."

--(236)