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.

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.

You can tell a true war story by the questions you ask. Somebody tells a story, let's say, and afterward you ask, 'Is it true?' and if the answer matters, you've got your answer . . . Absolute occurrence is irrelevant. A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth.

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.

Did I choose this life of illusion? Don't be mad. My bed was made, I just lied in it.

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

Inside I feel much like a 12-year-old or a 17-year-old who knows big words.