It's a hard thing to explain to somebody who hasn't felt it, but the presence of death and danger has a way of bringing you fully awake. It makes things vivid.

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

If a story seems moral, do not believe it. If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie.

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

Why do our politicians put warnings on cigarette packs and not on their own foreheads?

Imagination, like reality, has its limits.

Fiction is the lie that helps us understand the truth.