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

[Y]ou can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil.

A lot like yesterday, a lot like never.

A miracle to confound natural law, a baffling reversal of the inevitable consequences . . . a miracle. . . . An act of high imagination -- daring and lurid and impossible. Yes, a cartoon of the mind.

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

...you find yourself studying the fine colors on the river, you feel wonder and awe at the setting of the sun, and you are filled with a hard, aching love for how the world could be and always should be, but now is not.

... 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.