Patricia O'Brien

“I continued up the stairs, this time on wings, suspecting for the first time that Louisa's book might outlive us all. ”

“I was seeing what a writer can do with the tatters of truth, the unfinished stories that give us no rest. ”

“The women who went to the field, you say... A few names were writ, and by chance live to-day;But's a perishing record fast fading away,Of those we recall, there are scarcely a score...And what would they do if war came again?...They would stand with you now, as they stood with you then,The nurses, consolers, and saviors of men.”

“...brooding only feeds the strange pleasure of melancholy...”

“He had illuminated the heartbreaking cruelty of war: When men who fight become nothing, only packages of bones and blood deposited in the earth with no clarion call to memory, those they love are left without a way to make such devastating loss hold meaning.”