They carried all they could bear, and then some, including a silent awe for the terrible power of the things they carried.

Inside I feel much like a 12-year-old or a 17-year-old who knows big words.

And as a writer now, I want to save Linda's life. Not her body--her life.

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.

The presence of danger has a way of making you feel fully awake.

They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love, longing--these were intangibles, but the intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had tangible weight. They carried shameful memories. They carried the common secret of cowardice.... Men killed, and died, because they were embarrassed not to.

A place where your life exists before you live it, and where it goes afterwards.