You must remember that I have at my internal demand every expertise known to
our history. This is the fund of energy I -draw upon when I address the
mentality of war. If you have not heard the moaning cries of the wounded and
the dying, you do not know about war. I have heard those cries in such numbers
that they haunt me. I have cried out myself in the aftermath of battle. I have
suffered wounds in every epoch-wounds from fist and club and rock, from
shell-studded limb and bronze sword, from the mace and the cannon, from arrows
and lasguns and the silent smothering of atomic dust, from biological invasions
which blacken the tongue and drown the lungs, from the swift gush of flame and
the silent working of slow poisons. . . and more I will not recount! I have
seen and felt them all. To those who dare ask why I behave as I do, I say: With
my memories, I can do nothing else. I am not a coward and once I was human.

-- The Stolen Journals
--[god-emperor]--