...his job was the very least important part of his life, never to be mentioned except in irony.

In avoiding specific goals he had avoided specific limitations. For the time being the world, life itself, could be his chosen field.

He couldn't even tell whether he was angry or contrite, whether it was forgiveness he wanted or the power to forgive.

There's never been anything funny about a woman dying for love.

She just happened to feel like it. Wasn’t that after all, the only reason there was? Had she ever had a less selfish, more complicated reason for doing anything in her life?

Synchronize watches at oh six hundred' says the infantry captain, and each of his huddled lieutenants finds respite from fear in the act of bringing two tiny pointers into jeweled alignment while tons of heavy artillery go fluttering overhead: the prosaic, civilian-looking dial of the watch has restored, however briefly, an illusion of personal control. Good, it counsels, looking tidily up from the hairs and veins of each terribly vulnerable wrist; fine: so far, everything's happening right on time.

Anybody's marriage might benefit from an occasional embargo on talk.