“Life took longer to reassemble than it did to blow apart, but that didn't mean it wouldn't be lovely, providing that one remembered to go for country walks, and to tune the wireless to music.”

“One could always imagine that one's life, though smoldering in parts, might be undamaged in the west.”

“They spoke of small things at first, since it was best, when reattaching threads, to begin with the easiest knots.”

“People spoke in whispers, as if the war was listening”

“She knew, now, why her father had not spoken of the last war, nor Alistair of his. It was hardly fair on the living.”

“I suppose we ought to be getting home, in any case.Oh god, is it wartime already?Look on the bright side: itll be dinner when we get back.”

“I have gone to war and now I can issue my complaint. I can sit on my porch and complain all day. And you must listen. Some of you will say to me: You signed the contract, you crying bitch, and you ...”

“Twelve years ago, when I was 10, I played at being a soldier. I walked up the brook behind our house in Bronxville to a junglelike, overgrown field and dug trenches down to water level with my frie...”

“For no matter how many battles had been won or lost, no matter how many friends and soldiers killed, every battle felt like the first. And I realized that it wasn't the training, nor the pain of se...”

“War is what happens when language fails.”

“Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime.”

“The world is full enough of hurts and mischances without wars to multiply them.”