He wished he could've explained some of this. How he had been braver than he ever thought possible, but how he had not been so brave as he wanted to be. The distinction was important.

I want you to feel what I felt. I want you to know why story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth.

I'll picture Rat Kiley face, his grief, and I'll think, You dumb cooze. Because she wasn't listening. It wasn't a war story. It was a love story.

And in the end, of course, a true war story is never about war. It's about sunlight. It's about the special way that dawn spreads out on a river when you know you must cross the river and march into the mountains and do things you are afraid to do. It's about love and memory. It's about sorrow. It's about sisters who never write back and people who never listen.

Storytelling is the essential human activity. The harder the situation, the more essential it is.

Imagination is a killer.

Even then, at nine years old, I wanted to live inside her body. I wanted to melt into her bones - THAT kind of love.