“The afternoon had passed to a ghostly gray. She was struck by the immensity of things, so much water and sky and forest, and after a time it occurred to her that shed lived a life almost entirely i...”

“With a hangover and with fear, it is difficult to put a helmet on your head.”

“That's what fiction is for. It's for getting at the truth when the truth isn't sufficient for the truth.”

“A lie, sometimes, can be truer than the truth, which is why fiction gets written.”

“In any war story, but especially a true one, it's difficult to separate what happened from what seemed to happen. What seems to happen becomes its own happening and has to be told that way. The ang...”

“Its a hard thing to explain to somebody who hasnt felt it, but the presence of death and danger has a way of bringing you fully awake. It makes things vivid. When youre afraid, really afraid, you s...”

“So, let us summon a new spirit of patriotism, of responsibility, where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look over not only ourselves, but each other.”

“The trick is that as long as you know who you are and what makes you happy, it doesn't matter how others see you.”

“Selfishness at the expense of others is bad. Self-care for the betterment of others is good.”

“I was aware of something stable in his nature. Ha game me a feeling of security, as if nothing I said or did would change his opinion of me. I never found his pleasantries irksome, partly, no doubt...”

“But when we sit together, close, said Bernard, we melt into each other with phrases. We are edged with mist. We make an unsubstantial territory.”

“You praise man who has the ability to perform great actions.I admire man who can deal with great pain and knows no despair.”

“Pictures deface walls more often than they decorate them.”

“Western governments have generally tried to contain genocide by appeasing its architects. But the sad record of the last century shows that the walls the United States tries to build around genocid...”