I will not let her speak because I love her, and when you love someone, you do not make them tell war stories. A war story is a black space. On the one side is before and on the other side is after, and what is inside belongs only to the dead.

I believe we have an utterly unique specimen on our hands: a child who listens.

These are the folk who may pass into the kingdom of heaven: the grief-stricken, lovers, scholars of a certain obsessive disposition. Brute beasts. Women who have become as men and men who have become as women. Writers of books with long titles. Only those knights who have failed to touch the Grail. Industrious women. You, and I, and a boy named Oleg, and a girl with blue hair.

When little ones say they want to go home, they almost never mean it. They mean they are tired of this particular game and would like to start another.

That’s what happens to friends, eventually. They leave you. It’s practically what they’re for.

Respect me. Be proud, and if you love me, a little afraid, because love so often looks like fear. We are alike. We are alike.

You will always fall in love, and it will always be like having your throat cut, just that fast.