19 quotes found
“What was it like? Hell if I know. But next time someone asks.... I'll answer crooked, and I'll answer long. And when they get confused or angry, I'll smile. Finally, I'll think. Someone who underst...”
“Worry only about what you control. The rest is war.”
“Youll never let me go, will you? Giving me the space and freedom I want isnt your idea of love, is it? Youd rather cut me deep on earth to spare me pain in hell, whereas I think hell is right here.”
“There is no way to imagine what it feels like to be shot at. I will never be with him when he is the most scared.”
“As he moves through his day, sometimes he stops and just stares at me. There is something on the tip of his tongue. But he doesn't say it. I'm not sure he knows what it is.”
“I hate myself that I wasn't there for him. I hate that I could not feel it in him. How could I not know what had happened? How could I not hear it in his voice, his comments, or in his demeanor? He...”
“My wife is alone in our full bed too. Her husband, the father of her children, never came back from Iraq. When I deployed the first time she asked her grandmother for advice. Her grandfather served...”
“But the shock wears off, more quickly for some, but eventually for most. Fast food and alcohol are seductive, and I didnt fight too hard. Your old routine is easy to fall back into, preferences and...”
“Most likely, they were writing the same type of macho bullshit that I wrote, trying to sound tough with their words in case words were all that made it home.”
“The world he had left was not ready for his return, or rather, he was not ready to return to the world he had left.”
“I did exactly what you told me to do, Nick. Didn't you tell me to just write the stupid book already? And that even doing the worst thing on the planet had to count for something? Well I can't thin...”
“Oh God, what do we do?""Do?" Levi said, looking oddly triumphant, like his plans for the night had finally materialized, Like he had been hoping for some disaster like this to happen so he didn't h...”
“For the good that I would: I do not, but the evil which I would not, I do.”
“Above everything else, beyond the long hardships, one out- come is the most invaluable. The sisterhoods. The lifelong friends and bonds that will never lessen. Years can go by, and I will pick up w...”
“All this is what it means to regret.”
“I'm obsessed with trying to recount events as accurately and honestly as possible, but in practice the only thing I'm really any good at is telling you how I feel.”
“We carry the world. They did. All those young men did. They carried the world, and it was heavy, and they didn't know what to do with it. Was this the rest? Was this the war? Things had already spu...”
“And that was my homecoming. It was fine, I guess. Getting back feels like your first breath after nearly drowning. Even if it hurts, it's good.”
“You’ll never let me go, will you? Giving me the space and freedom I want isn’t your idea of love, is it? You’d rather cut me deep on earth to spare me pain in hell, whereas I think hell is right here.”
