Once someone's dead you can't make them undead.

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.

War is hell, but that's not the half of it, because war is also mystery and terror and adventure and courage and discovery and holiness and pity and despair and longing and love. War is nasty; war is fun. War is thrilling; war is drudgery. War makes you a man; war makes you dead.

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

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

It wasn't a question of deceit. Just the opposite; he wanted to heat up the truth, to make it burn so hot that you would feel exactly what he felt.

What sticks to memory, often, are those odd little fragments that have no beginning and no end.