Peace is not happenstance. It is a living fire that must be fed constantly. It must be tended to with vigilance, else it dies out.

Naughty John, Naughty John, does his work with his apron on. Cuts your throat and takes your bones, sells 'em off for a coupla stones.

Scoring well on tests is the sort of happy thing that gets the school district the greenbacks they crave. Understanding and appreciating the material are secondary.

He told me that once, in the war, he’d come upon a German soldier in the grass with his insides falling out; he was just lying there in agony. The soldier had looked up at Sergeant Leonard, and even though they didn’t speak the same language, they understood each other with just a look. The German lying on the ground; the American standing over him. He put a bullet in the soldier’s head. He didn’t do it with anger, as an enemy, but as a fellow man, one soldier helping another.

And now I understand that truth casts a spell of its own, one I'm not sure of how to hold on to, though I'm desperate to try.

What happens if your choice is misguided, You must try to correct it But what if it’s too late? What if you can’t? Then you must find a way to live with it.

I want to ask him if it’s possible that a girl can be born unlovable, or does she just become that way?