Imagination, like reality, has its limits.

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

Can the foot soldier teach anything important about war, merely for having been there? I think not. He can tell war stories.

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

... when he kissed her, she received the kiss without returning it, her eyes wide open, not afraid, not a virgin's eyes, just flat and uninvolved.

Laughter does not deny pain. Laughter - like a wail - acknowledges and replies to pain.

Stories are for joining the past to the future. Stories are for those late hours in the night when you can't remember how you got from where you were to where you are. Stories ar for eternity, when memory is erased, when there is nothing to remember except the story.