“This, she realizes, is the basis of all fear. That a light you are powerless to stop will turn on you and usher a bullet to its mark.”

“When I lost my sight, Werner, people said I was brave. When my father left, people said I was brave. But it is not bravery; I have no choice. I wake up and live my life. Don't you do the same?”

“I am only alive because I have not yet died.”

“What the war did to dreamers.”

“War is a bazaar where lives are traded like any other commodity: chocolate or bullets or parachute silk.”

“One night he sits up. In cots around him are a few dozen sick or wounded. A warm September wind pours across the countryside and sets the walls of the tent rippling.Werners head swivels lightly on ...”

“Doubt is a creature within the air. It grows when someone hesitates.”

“So, the word wild here is not used in its modern pejorative sense, meaning out of control, but in its original sense, which means to live a natural life, one in which the criatura, creature, has in...”

“Destiny gets compressed, you know, into just that small fraction of a second you have right in front of you at any one time. And theres nothing romantic about keeping your head down to avoid gettin...”

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”

“Every man who has reached even his intellectual teens begins to suspect that life is no farce that it is not genteel comedy even that it flowers and fructifies on the contrary out of the profoundes...”

“Let us love. Let our lives be a perpetual song of love for God, first of all, and for all human beings who suffer, love, and mourn. Let deep joy live in us. Let us be like the lark, enemy of the ni...”