So much in life came down to timing.

Had any poet adequately described the wretched ugliness of a loved one turned inside out with grief?

Darling girl, blinded by foolish thoughts of love. How to tell her that the hearts of men were not so easily won. If won, rarely kept.

She's one of the few people able to look beyond the lines on my face to see the twenty-year-old who lives inside.

Wars make history seem deceptively simple. They provide clear turning points, easy distinctions.: before and after, winner and loser, right and wrong. True history, the past, is not like that. It isn't flat or linear. It has no outline. It is slippery, like liquid; infinite and unknowable, like space. And it is changeable: just when you think you see a pattern, perspective shifts, an alternate version is proffered, a long-forgotten memory resurfaces.

...She's understood the power of stories. Their magical ability to refill the wounded part of people.

Better to lose oneself in action than to wither in despair.