What would you do? Would you jump? Would you feel pity for yourself? Would you think about your family and your childhood and your dreams and all you're leaving behind? Would it hurt? Would it feel like dying? Would you cry, as I did?

There is always the threat of tomorrow's treachery, or next year's treachery, or the treachery implicit in all the tomorrows beyond that.

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

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.

But in a story I can steal her soul.

But in a story, which is a kind of dreaming, the dead sometimes smile and sit up and return to the world.

Even then, at nine years old, I wanted to live inside her body. I wanted to melt into her bones - THAT kind of love.