Life is never all one thing. It bounces around. Certainly, my own life has.

But this too is true: stories can save us.

I'll picture Rat Kiley face, his grief, and I'll think, You dumb cooze. Because she wasn't listening. It wasn't a war story. It was a love story.

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

Can the foot soldier teach anything important about war, merely for having been there? I think not. He can tell war stories.

you can tell a true war story if it embarrasses you. If you don't care for obscenity, you don't care for the truth; if you don't care for the truth, watch how you vote. Send guys to war, they come home talking dirty.

... 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.