“Only happy people have nightmares, from overeating. For those who live a nightmare reality, sleep is a black hole, lost in time, like death.”

“Then there was the war, and I married it because there was nothing else when I reached the age of falling in love.”

“No time to spare: the expression assumed its full significance, as so many expressions do in wartime.”

“The problems I had existed before I did, and I discovered them.”

“What happened next? I retain nothing from those terrible minutes except indistinct memories which flash into my mind with sudden brutality, like apparitions, among bursts and scenes and visions tha...”

“I had often thought that if I managed to live through the war I wouldn't expect too much of life. How could one resent disappointment in love if life itself was continuously in doubt? Since Belgoro...”

“No time to spare: the expression assumed its full significance, as so many expressions do in wartime.”

“This time we'll be fighting for the nation. The company commander says that it's better to be the ghost of a fallen soldier than a nationless slave. For the sake of our fellow countrymen, our famil...”

“When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains, and the women come out to cut up what remains, jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains and go to your gawd like a soldier.”

“But people had forgotten there was a day in the not too distant past when theyd not seen or heard of bombings, and suicide vests, and snipers. Alicia, though, had not forgotten.”

“Every morningI wake up with the newsof bloodshed.I feel my body,desperate to know whetherIm still alive.”

“But people had forgotten there was a day in the not too distant past when they’d not seen or heard of bombings, and suicide vests, and snipers. Alicia, though, had not forgotten.”