it was love, of course, though I didn't know it then and Finn was both its subject and object. He accepted love instinctively, without responsibility or conditions, like a wild thing glimpsed through trees.

Things Happen and once they start happening you pretty much just to hold on for dear life and see where they drop you when they stop.

Every war has turning points and every person too.

It's a strange sensation to live inside another person's life, to wonder all the time what he is doing, or thinking or feeling.

I can't even trust my own imaginary dog. How much lower can a person get?

It was not a big smile, not particularly bold or polite or ironic or glib, not asking for anything or offering anything, not stringy or careless, not, in short, like any smile I had ever experienced before. But such a smile! You could burn a hole in the world with that smile.

The facts of his existence are plain. I know that he will never silence those unspeakable voices. He heard how people killed, and how they died and their voices infected him, coursed through his body, poisoned him. He didn't know how to turn off the noise, or turn the hate back out onto the world like the rest of us. He turned it on himself. You could see that from the scars on him.