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.

But in a story I can steal her soul.

Imagination is a killer.

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

Writing doesn’t get easier with experience. The more you know, the harder it is to write.

Together we understood what terror was: you're not human anymore. You're a shadow. You slip out of your own skin, like molting, shedding your own history and your own future, leaving behind everything you ever were or wanted to believed in. You know you're about to die. And it's not a movie and you aren't a hero and all you can do is whimper and wait.

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.