You can tell a true war story by the questions you ask. Somebody tells a story, let's say, and afterward you ask, 'Is it true?' and if the answer matters, you've got your answer . . . Absolute occurrence is irrelevant. A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth.

[Y]ou can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil.

It was very sad, he thought. The things men carried inside. The things men did or felt they had to do.

But this too is true: stories can save us.

It was my view then, and still is, that you don't make war without knowing why. Knowledge of course, is always imperfect, but it seemed to me that when a nation goes to war it must have reasonable confidence in the justice and imperative of its cause. You can't fix your mistakes. Once people are dead, you can't make them undead.

Men killed, and died, because they were embarrassed not to.

...precisely where the land touched water at high tide, where things came together but also separated.