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.

If you don't care for obscenity, you don't care for the truth.

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

you're never more alive than when you're almost dead.

The world shrieks and sinks talons into our hearts. This we call memory.

Everything was such a damned nice idea when it was an idea.

Together we understood what terror was: you're not human anymore. You're a shadow. You slip out of your own skin, like molting, shedding your own history and your own future, leaving behind everything you ever were or wanted to believed in. You know you're about to die. And it's not a movie and you aren't a hero and all you can do is whimper and wait.