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

When your afraid,reallyafraid, you see things you never saw before, you pay attention to the world.

And in the end, of course, a true war story is never about war. It's about sunlight. It's about the special way that dawn spreads out on a river when you know you must cross the river and march into the mountains and do things you are afraid to do. It's about love and memory. It's about sorrow. It's about sisters who never write back and people who never listen.

I guess we're really brothers, aren't we? Don't know what that means, except it means that some of the same things we remember.

Certain blood was being shed for uncertain reasons.

Fiction is the lie that helps us understand the truth.

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