Stories are for joining the past to the future. Stories are for those late hours in the night when you can't remember how you got from where you were to where you are. Stories ar for eternity, when memory is erased, when there is nothing to remember except the story.

Men killed, and died, because they were embarrassed not to.

Everyone acts stupid at some time in order to be loved.

It wasn't a question of deceit. Just the opposite; he wanted to heat up the truth, to make it burn so hot that you would feel exactly what he felt.

It's not just the embarrassment of tears. That's part of it, no doubt, but what embarrasses me much more, and always will, is the paralysis that took my heart. A moral freeze: I couldn't decide, I couldn't act, I couldn't comport myself with even a pretense of modest human dignity.

What sticks to memory, often, are those odd little fragments that have no beginning and no end.

They carried all they could bear, and then some, including a silent awe for the terrible power of the things they carried.