Being young is an 18 year prison sentence for a crime your parents committed. But you do get time off for good behavior.

One judge is coughing his life out into bloody handkerchiefs and the other is burying his wife, and you think this is how God answers your prayers?

And what? What's the other choice? To passively let things happen and then say: "Tut-tut, what at botch that was"? Don't we all manipulate people? Even if we openly ask them to make a choice, don't we try to frame it so they'll chose as we think they should?

Short stories are designed to deliver their impact in as few pages as possible. A tremendous amount is left out, and a good short story writer learns to include only the most essential information.

You’re not a human being until you value something more than the life of your body. And the greater the thing you live and die for the greater you are.

Since when do you have to tell the enemy when he has won?

The only way to retrieve a secret,once known, is to replace it with a lie.