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.

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

There was the single abiding certainty that they would never be at a loss for things to carry.

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.

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

I live in my head all day long and the world is a little dreamy.

Writing doesn’t get easier with experience. The more you know, the harder it is to write.