This (Vietnam) was a land of rebellious barons. It was like Europe in the Middle Ages. But what were the Americans doing here? Columbus had not yet discovered their country.

God is love. I don't say the heart doesn't feel a taste of it, but what a taste. The smallest glass of love mixed with a pint pot of ditch-water. We wouldn't recognize that love. It might even look like hate. It would be enough to scare us - God's love.

...every monologue sooner or later becomes a discussion.

One's life is more formed, I sometimes think, by books than by human beings: it is out of books one learns about love and pain at second hand.

Who knows whether there may not be a moment in childhood when the world changes forever, like making a face when the clock strikes?

Innocence always calls mutely for protection when we would be so much wiser to guard ourselves against it: innocence is like a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm.

Perhaps the comparison is closer to the Chinese cook who leaves hardly any part of a duck unserved.